


The Ones Left Standing

by strangestquiet



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M, post s13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:39:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6241372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangestquiet/pseuds/strangestquiet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While awaiting rescue on Chorus, Tucker disappears after being implicated in an assassination attempt on UNSC prisoner Malcolm Hargrove. Convinced he’s innocent, Wash resolves to find him and clear his name before the United Army of Chorus can bring him to justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because this fic was originally for a Big Bang that didn't end up happening, [PlayerProphet](http://playerprophet.tumblr.com) has graciously donated her lovely art to add to it and I'm cry ;-; You're a princess and ilu. Everyone please enjoy her art and tell her she's pretty and buy stuff from her ok?

 “--fifty mercs, armed to the teeth--”

“--to be kidding, look at the damage! It had to be a hundred--”

The excited chatter of the New Republic recruits quieted as Washington approached the _Staff of Charon_ , but even the presence of a superior officer wasn’t enough to smother it entirely. They snapped to attention with crisp salutes as he approached, and after he passed, their gossip carried on like it had never been interrupted.

“I can’t believe they survived…”

“Seriously. I knew they were good, but holy shit…”

The downed carcass of Malcolm Hargrove’s flagship still sat where it had crashed, twenty clicks from their nearest outpost and perilously close to the edge of a ravine. Miraculously, the hull had mowed down enough trees on its descent and dragged a deep enough trench behind it to allow emergency vehicles to push through the jungle after them. On top of that, if they’d been in the air just a few seconds longer, their momentum would have carried them over the canyon edge and everyone still on board would have plunged to their deaths.

Wash wasn’t surprised the star-struck recruits thought it was skill. That so much of what they did came down to sheer dumb luck was sometimes too harrowing to think about.

He stood aside to make way for a salvage team towing a large sealed crate behind them. Standing orders were to strip the vessel and secure any and all stolen UNSC equipment, and seize the rest while Hargrove was being investigated -- or at least recover whatever hadn’t burned up in the crash. The bow of the ship was mostly intact; explosions toward the stern had triggered the doors to close in the fire zones, sparing the rest of the ship from more extensive interior damage. The salvage teams were now slowly working their way back through the fire-ravaged aft compartments, and that was where Wash was headed.

“Agent Washington,” called a young soldier up ahead. White Federal Army of Chorus armor, tinny voice filtering through her helmet radio -- just a kid, Wash thought, just like the ones rushing to salute him outside. Dr. Grey’s slightly crazed laughter echoed in his ears: _The only people not wearing armor these days are dead!_

"Lieutenant Lowell," he greeted her. "Agent Carolina said you had something for us."

She nodded. “Yes, sir. This way.”

Lowell led him to a burned-out compartment with no door. Not by design -- something had cut through it, probably a blowtorch by the look of the scoring on the frame. Inside was an assortment of junk, debris, and dead weapons. A hunk of twisted metal that looked like it might have been a desk at one point had been blown clear across the room and now rested on its end against the far wall. A salvage team had piled the refuse into a crate, and were now dutifully cataloguing every piece. Carolina turned to greet him when he arrived, the calm eye of the storm.

 

"Still not used to seeing you in that armor," she said.

He glanced down at his borrowed New Republic suit, painted gunmetal grey and yellow to give him some measure of recognizability. "Still not used to wearing it," he admitted. "I’ll be glad when they finish fixing up mine. You were looking for me?"

"Yeah. Sorry to call you back so soon," she said, and Wash could hear the exhaustion in her voice. He sympathized. It had been three days since the ship had come down and Hargrove had been apprehended, and apart from his overnight infirmary visit they’d had almost no time to rest before they’d been assigned to oversee the recovery process on a rotating shift. No one better to identify wayward Freelancer equipment than wayward Freelancers, Kimball had decided, and now here they were.

“It’s fine,” Wash assured her. With a nod of his helmet, he indicated the wreck surrounding them. "Somehow this ship looks worse every time I see it."

"It’s a mess, all right. We just got into this section this morning," said Lowell. She led them to the back of the compartment, past the dangling nest of exposed wires and empty clips discarded on the deck. "There’s actually a working terminal in here. We think this must have been an office. When we used it to try and access the ship’s systems, we found… something."

Lowell touched a keypad embedded in the bulkhead, and a virtual terminal lit up before their eyes. Its light sputtered at first as it struggled to life, and then a distorted feminine voice filled the room. 

"--gency sys-systems offline. Fatal system er-error--" 

"We think it’s an AI," said Lowell. "Security firewalled it when the ship went down, but this terminal has a direct link. She won’t respond to us, keeps saying--” 

“--lert. Unauthorized-ized access detect-detect--” 

“Yeah, that.” 

"Hang on," said Wash. "Doesn’t that sound like--?" 

"FILSS?" asked Carolina. "Is that you?" 

The only response at first was a garbled noise from the terminal as it nearly died altogether. Then the voice responded, "Identi...tion in pro-progress-gress... Hello, Ag-Agent Car-Caro-lina-lina…” 

"Son of a bitch," Wash sighed. "Hargrove must have found her when the Project went down." 

"Stole her," Carolina corrected him bitterly. 

"Spoils of war?" 

"I’m sure that’s how he saw it. FILSS, run diagnostics.” 

“Un-unauthor-authorized access-cess--“ 

Carolina hummed thoughtfully. “Not even for us, huh? Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.” She turned to Lowell. “Get a tech team over here and see if they can extract her. We’ll put people to work recovering her data." 

"Yes, ma’am. We found something else you may be interested in as well." Lowell signalled to a nearby private in Fed armor who quickly wheeled an equipment cart over to them. Right on top of the broken weapons and busted sheet metal sat disconnected pieces of scorch-marked UNSC armor, charred black except for prominent streaks of aqua still visible underneath. 

"Look at that," said Wash. "Guess that answers where Tucker’s armor went." 

Carolina picked up the burned chestplate and examined it more closely. "Fire damage looks external… Should be all right to wear once it’s cleaned up,” she mused, and tossed it back onto the heap. “Make sure it gets into storage. He’ll want it back.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

One of the utility pockets on the back of the chestplate had popped open when it hit the cart, and Wash spotted something sticking out of it, contrasted sharply against the scorched suit. He reached down and pulled out the photograph of Junior, fortunately protected by the flame-retardant armor lining. 

"That, uh… That sure is an alien with a basketball…” said one of the recruits behind him as he examined the photograph. 

"Captain Tucker’s son?" asked Lowell. "I heard they were alien ambassadors of some kind." 

"Jesus,” murmured the Fed recruit. “Is there anything that guy can’t do?" 

“Take an order without back-talking,” said Carolina, and Wash was suddenly glad for the privacy of his helmet when he couldn’t suppress a smirk. "I’m guessing he’ll want that back, too. Bring it by the infirmary at base if you have time later, Wash. Might do him some good." 

He glanced at her, startled by the implication of that statement. He hadn’t been expecting this part to happen so soon. "Tucker’s awake? Since when?" 

"This morning. He might be ready for visitors by the time you’re done here." She paused just slightly, enough for him to sense her hesitation. "Or I can drop in on him, if you’d rather. Up to you." 

She was offering him a way out, and Wash felt a momentary swell of guilt for considering taking her up on it. His wounds were old; hers, still fresh. He wouldn’t make her do this, of all things. "No, I got it covered. Go get some rest, boss. You earned it." 

He couldn’t discern Carolina’s reaction through her visor. But just for a moment when she turned her head to watch the recruits cart away the salvage, he caught himself expecting to see Epsilon sputter to life above her shoulder. And from the way she paused for just that one second, he wondered if even three days later she was still expecting the same thing. 

“Thanks, Wash,” she said, calm and clear, and she gave him one final nod before departing, officially turning her shift over to him. 

A moment later, Lowell raised a hand to the side of her helmet as someone unheard came in over her radio. “Apologies, sir, I’m needed in the loading bay,” she informed him. “I’ll radio you when we find more equipment. And I’ll send the techs over right away for the AI.” 

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he acknowledged, and he watched her leave on the heels of her salvage team, leaving him alone amid the wreckage of his old life, and the new.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The infirmary in the Federal Army outpost they'd occupied and declared as a base of operations was filled to capacity and then some. Spare mattresses from the barracks lined the floor wherever they wouldn’t be in the way of medical personnel, and then spilled into the hallway outside when that space ran out. The critical cases were all airlifted to hospital in Valerosa -- the largest of the abandoned cities on Chorus, now that Armonia lay in ruins -- but the process of moving the army there on a permanent basis was slow, and they couldn’t spare the resources to hold such a large area just yet. So most of the wounded came through here first, even though their number of injured had already quickly outpaced their capacity to provide treatment. 

Help was coming. But Chorus was on the edge of colonized space, and as Wash understood it, slipspace calculations were spotty under the best of circumstances (“And at that distance?” the navigator had said, and then he’d shrugged and made a wiggly hand wave sort of gesture). They couldn’t count on rescue ships with supplies arriving any time soon, so they’d need to make the best of what they had. 

A medic told him “last bed on the left” when he stopped to ask, so he made his way there as quietly as possible in his armor so as not to disturb the staff or patients. The actual beds that weren’t simply mattresses on the floor still had curtains, and Tucker's was drawn closed. Wash took one last moment to steel himself, and parted it slowly. 

Tucker was awake and lying flat on his back, the bed partially elevated. He looked roughed-up and shaken, like he’d tumbled over a cliff edge and hit all the biggest, sharpest rocks on the way down. Wash’s eyes were drawn immediately to the splint supporting his severely fractured left arm, and to the slight bump in his hospital gown where a chest tube had been inserted to prevent his lung from collapsing again. 

"You’ve looked better," Wash noted. 

Tucker’s heavy-lidded eyes widened when he recognized his voice. "Holy shit…” he rasped, laboring over each word. “You’re alive?” 

"You know me. Part cockroach." 

"Fuck..." Tucker’s head tipped back onto his pillow in relief. "Heard someone say your armor was wrecked so I thought-- I mean... I heard them talking about Sarge and Cab--” His voice cracked on the last word and the disruption sent him into a coughing fit that left a pained, pronounced wince in his expression. He recovered quickly and caught his breath again, but the furrow in his brow didn’t go away as he asked, "...Caboose made it, didn’t he?" 

"Everyone made it," said Wash, as calmly as possible to make sure Tucker absorbed the magnitude and importance of that fact. He made the victory sound simpler than it really was, and that was deliberate. Rattling off a laundry list of injuries and complications right now would only make him feel worse. As it was, Tucker’s eyes lowered a little, and Wash knew he was staring at the unfamiliar armor he was wearing, picturing the wound underneath. What Tucker couldn’t see was a second-hand bodysuit, several layers of bandages, brand new scarring that spanned the width of his chest and left shoulder, and an ache that wasn’t going away quickly enough for his liking. That, too, was a conversation best saved for later. “Hey,” he said, drawing Tucker’s eyes back up to his visor. “You did fine, all right? You got everyone out." 

Tucker’s dead-eyed stare made him feel small. "Not everyone," he said, hollowly. 

Wash closed his eyes. Shit. He’d been hoping this part could wait a while longer. No such luck. “Someone told you?” 

"He was in my head, and then he wasn’t. Kinda hard to miss." 

"I’m... sorry,” said Wash, awkwardly. “About Epsilon." 

" _’Epsilon'_ ," Tucker scoffed, and even as exhausted and injured as he was, the disgust in his ragged voice was a powerful thing. "Jesus, Wash... which one of you was the fucking computer?" 

"...Sorry," said Wash again, even if he didn’t quite mean it that time. He made a mental note to tread lightly; their checkered history wasn’t Tucker’s fault, after all. “I get it, Tucker. Really, I do. Losing comrades is one thing, but losing friends is… It’s not something you get used to." 

“You’d think I _would_ by now. Like, oh, hey, Church is dead again? Must be fucking Tuesday.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly with the heel of his palm, the one hooked up to an IV instead of in a splint. “God, I really... really fucked up this time...” 

Washington walked around the side of the bed, ignored the small folding chair that wouldn’t support the weight of his armor if he sat down. After a moment’s hesitation, he removed his helmet and propped it against his hip in the hopes that exposing both their faces would put them on equal ground and make Tucker feel more at ease. He wasn’t sure what else to do. Personability had been ripped out of him a long time ago, but he’d been slowly recovering it ever since Tucker and Caboose had stuffed him into blue armor to keep him out of prison -- the _last_ time Epsilon had done something this reckless and stupid. The Blue Team M.O., he supposed. "He made the choice," he said cautiously, to make sure Tucker understood this. "There wasn’t anything else you could have done." 

Tucker stared at the ceiling instead of acknowledging he’d spoken, and Wash couldn’t blame him. Mostly he was parroting words he thought were supposed to help, saying what he thought a normal person would say when faced with what they’d experienced, and neither of them had much use for that -- Tucker felt things too raw, too intensely for such impersonal expressions to do any good, and Wash had strangled his own ability to provide anything more sincere. This close, he could more easily see the rash of scabbed-over cuts and bruises blossoming on Tucker’s dark skin, the hollowed rings under his eyes where the dimmed-down lights cast their shadows, his eyes darting and throat working, his expression tired and _livid_. Wash recognized the look on his face. Felt it so deep in his bones he had to think of something, anything else to say. 

“He, ah... left us a recording.” 

Tucker nodded. "Yeah... I know." 

“Have you heard it yet?” 

“No. And I don’t want to, either.” 

Wash frowned. “Why not? At least he said goodbye this time. Isn't that what you wanted?” 

“C’mon, Wash, I’m fucking injured here. You can’t find any real work to do?" 

“This _is_ real work. You’re on my squad. I’m checking in with you.” 

“You drew the short straw, huh?” 

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Wash, and he didn’t miss the glance Tucker spared him after that comment, loaded with a curious, cautious sort of weight. As if he hadn’t expected someone would _volunteer_ to check up on him. “We need to make sure you're okay. And in this case, I’m… let's say 'uniquely qualified' to judge what 'okay' looks like.” 

The curious glint in Tucker’s eyes instantly flickered out. “Oh,” he said flatly, looking away. “You wanna know if Church fucked up my head.” 

“It’s a bad habit of his, yeah.” 

“I’m fine. Never been better.” 

“No headaches?” 

“Before or after you came in?” 

“Not hearing any voices?” 

“Seriously...?” 

“Memories that aren’t yours?” 

“ _Wow_. You really went off the deep end when it happened to you, huh?" 

"Just answer, please." 

"Nothing happened," Tucker insisted, and though Wash expected a litany of complaints to follow, he simply added, a little more subdued, "I dunno why. My brain should be scrambled fucking egg, but… it’s not. Just hurts." 

Wash arched a brow. "You sound… disappointed." 

"Holy shit, no. Not in any rush to get thrown in a padded cell, thanks. Just..." Tucker shrugged. "You were some... motherfucking spec ops super-soldier and you _still_ got fucked up. What’s so different about me?" 

“Well... for starters, you were carrying him in your armor’s AI slot, so that’s where he fragmented. The distance between your helmet and your neural implants likely dampened the impact.” He gestured toward the back of his neck. "When we were assigned AIs we had our implants augmented to carry them there instead of in our helmets, so he was plugged in directly when he did it to me. He broke down, our minds meshed together and then… stuck. Like getting splinters in your brain. It wasn't pretty." 

"Splinters…” Tucker echoed. “You saw what happened to him. Things he remembered and shit?" 

"Yeah. The torture, mostly, but -- other stuff, too. Things from… before." And then, more cautiously: "Why? What did you see?" 

For a moment, Tucker looked at him more closely than he had since he’d first arrived, his eyes mapping Wash’s face very carefully. Wash found the scrutiny uncomfortable; he never knew what expression he was supposed wear when face-to-face with people. One of many reasons he preferred to keep his helmet on, even among his friends. But whatever Tucker was looking for, he evidently didn’t find it, and he settled back against his pillow with a tired sigh. "Nothing," he said at last. "Just curious." 

It was an obvious lie -- one he didn’t know how to unravel just yet, but which he also couldn’t allow to pass unchallenged. “Tucker, you know you can -- talk to me. About Epsilon, the fighting… Any of it.” 

It was so halting and stilted an invitation that even _he_ didn’t believe himself, but thankfully, Tucker spared him having to continue. “Yeah, I know,” he said, quickly waving his good hand through the air to ward off his clumsy attempt at comfort. “Don’t make a thing out of it. And _please_ tell me you’re not just here to... psychoanalyze me and demonstrate your sad attempt at feelings.” 

"No,” Wash chuckled, and he couldn’t help but breathe a quiet sigh of relief at dodging that particular bullet. “Actually, I, ah... brought you a present." 

Tucker perked up a little at that. And when Wash produced the photo of Junior, his tired face lit up and he snatched it from his outstretched hand immediately. "Holy shit, dude, no way! I thought I lost that. Where’d you find it?" 

"On your GEN2 armor. The salvage crew recovered it from the crash today. Pretty much in one piece, by the way." 

"Pff, the fuck do I care? I got _way_ better armor now." 

Wash frowned hard, projecting his deep disapproval loud and clear. "You can’t keep that suit, Tucker. It’s evidence, not a trophy." 

"So? I found it -- ipso facto, fuck off, it’s mine. International Dibs Protocol." 

"Did you call it?" he asked, and when Tucker paused, taken aback by the question and apparently trying to recall whether or not he had, Wash quickly cut across him. "Dibs. On behalf of the UNSC." 

"Ohhhh, dick move. I wanted to take it home and show it off to Junior...” 

“Sorry. I don’t make the rules.” 

“Yeah, you just get all hot and bothered for ‘em...” Tucker fiddled with the photo for a moment, slowly turning it over once in his hand. “Uh… thanks. For finding this.” 

Wash shrugged. “Thanks for saving my life.” 

“Yeah…” said Tucker, though the discomfort of that reminder was completely undisguised in his expression. He bit his lip uncertainly, started, “Hey, um--”, but before he could finish his thought, the curtain enclosing the bed abruptly flew open, and there was Dr. Grey with a gaggle of rookie medics huddled close behind her. 

“Well, hel _lo_ ,” she chirped. “Sorry to interrupt, boys, but it’s time to do rounds with the kids!” 

“I’m twenty-one…” one of the Fed rookies protested weakly. 

“Oh, I know,” said Grey, a touch too sweetly. To the entire group, she continued, “Captain Tucker has some pulmonary contusions, several broken ribs, fractures in his left ulna, radius, _and_ femur, and his right lung just doesn’t want to stay inflated, so someone needs to check on that chest tube! And since I am just _too busy_ to handle non-critical cases, I’ll be passing him off to DuFresne.” 

“Oh my god,” choked Tucker. “Please, no.” 

“Thanks, Emily!” said a voice cheerful enough to match Grey’s, and then Doc gently nudged his way to the front of the group. “Tucker and I have a _very_ good working relationship. I delivered his baby back in Blood Gulch!” His pleasant tone lowered an octave as he cackled and added, “Babies… Disgusting.” 

“Ahh, the miracle of life,” sighed Grey dreamily. “Okay, next up! Who wants to see a patient with a third-degree burn shaped like a giraffe?!” 

“Oh, me!” said the twenty-one-year-old Fed, and the students shuffled on. 

“He’s gonna amputate my fucking arm,” Tucker protested. 

Doc laughed. “Aw, don’t be silly! I’m still the same old Doc you guys completely abandoned and forgot about for months. I’m gonna take _good care_ of you.” 

"Waaaash…” 

"Relax, I’m teasing. Practicing my bedside manner, y’know? Besides, we’re so busy I don’t have time to mess around -- patient recovery is priority number one!" Doc then turned to Wash, looked him up and down, and added, “Speaking of recovery… I’m surprised you’re out already, Wash. That was a pretty nasty wound they brought you in with.” 

“The healing unit did most of the work before I even got here,” he replied, trying very hard to pretend he didn’t notice the way Tucker tensed up next to him. “I got lucky.” 

“I’ll say! Thank heavens for special ops-grade medical equipment, huh?” 

"Yeah…” 

“Hey, uh, Doc…” said Tucker. “Can you give us a minute?” 

“Oh, sure. I need to get some things from my locker anyway. Be back in a sec!” 

As soon as Doc was gone from his curtained-off space and safely out of hearing range, Tucker whined, “Don’t leave me with him.” 

“You’ll be fine, you big baby. What did you want?” 

“What did they do with…” Tucker lowered his voice cautiously. “...The, uh, healing unit?”

 Before answering, Wash went to the curtain and ducked his head outside to make sure no one was listening, and then returned. “He’s in storage,” he said at last, taking care to keep his voice low. “He went into stasis when my armor locked down, but they managed to get him out after they rebooted me.” 

Tucker nodded thoughtfully. “And… the other ones?” 

“Still in the Meta’s armor. It’s almost completely totalled -- we’re working on getting them out.” 

“God dammit…” 

“Hey, they’re safer in there right now than out here. You’d rather the UNSC confiscate them?” 

“I’d _rather_ have my friend back,” Tucker spat. “I’d rather that prick _Hargrove_ be--” 

He watched closely as Tucker winced and pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead, his tirade cut short by a piercing pain he both recognized and remembered all too well. “Easy,” he murmured. “The first few days will be the worst. You’ll need to be careful to avoid causing long-term strain.” 

Tucker kept his eyes squinted shut for a few seconds, and didn’t open them again until his expression relaxed and the pain had evidently subsided. “You don’t gotta handle me with kid gloves, dude.” 

“I’m not...” 

“Yeah, you are. You’re not off babying Caboose, wherever he is, so why the fuck are you doing it to me?” 

Wash knew the reason -- thought he knew the reason, anyway, but he didn’t have a ready-made excuse to stand in for it, and it took him a noticeably long moment to collect himself. "I’ve... been in your place, and it sucks," he finally said, refusing to meet Tucker’s gaze. "And... I want you to get better. I’ve lost a lot of friends -- people I cared about. I’m getting kinda tired of it.” 

Tucker sat up stiffly after the following silence lasted a beat too long, and his mouth fell open. "Hooooly shit…” he breathed. “Oh, holy shit, Palomo was right.” 

“Words I’m sure you’ll never utter again. What was he right about?” 

“ _You_ ,” said Tucker. “You have a _thing_ for me." 

To his deep dismay, Wash felt his face go hot instantly, a flush that crept all the way to his ears. Fuck. He’d forgotten how surprisingly perceptive Tucker could be at the absolute worst of times. "Wh-- _Excuse me_?!" he sputtered, and tacked on a laugh he hoped sounded at least a little more convincing than he thought it did. "Don’t be ridiculous." 

"I thought he was just being an asshole, but he’s totally right! _That’s_ why you’re being so fucking insufferable!" Tucker smirked and held up a placating hand. "I’m hella flattered, dude, but you gotta ease off. You’re smothering me." 

“I do not -- That would be _entirely_ inappropriate,” he said sternly, and was fairly proud of himself for managing to keep his voice steady this time. Tucker was just trying to get a rise out of him and he _hated_ that it was working, so he shot back, a little spitefully, “And no offense, but you’re not exactly my type.” 

"What _type_?” Tucker scoffed, and Wash could swear he sounded genuinely affronted by his rebuff. “I’m a hot, single dad with sculpted abs and an ass that won’t quit -- I’m everyone’s type. If anything _you’re_ not _my_ type.” 

"Good night, Tucker." 

“Seriously, did you go blind?” Tucker called after him as he made his exit through the privacy curtain. "How could _this_ not be your type? Get back here and look at these calves, asshole!" 

Tucker’s outburst left him coughing and rasping, but Wash had no doubt he regretted none of it. Medics and their patients looked up curiously as he stalked past, and he shoved his helmet back on to hide his reddened face and save what remained of his dignity.


	2. Chapter 2

“Just so everyone knows,” said Grif, "I could be sleeping right now. This is bullshit."

"Can’t help but notice you’re saying that _now_ and not to their faces," said Simmons.

"But if I _don’t_ say it now, then no one’s gonna hear it. Because apparently I’m not important enough for anyone to actually ask for my opinion.”

"Dear god, was that an option for us all along?"

"So that’s why I’m saying it now." To the room: "This. Is fucking. Bullshit."

On the other side of the war room, Kimball did not look up from the tight circle she’d formed with her advisors in preparation for the imminent call. "Colonel," she said absently, "please deal with your troops."

"Gladly," said Sarge. He turned toward the fidgeting Reds. "Now, men, I know we ain’t exactly been treated well by the UNSC in the past -- and to be perfectly honest, looking pretty for their cameras and their officers ain’t my idea of a good time, either. So I’ll make you a deal: anyone who don’t wanna be here can be exempt in order to make a delivery for me instead."

Grif perked up immediately. "Seriously? Sign me the fuck--"

"The delivery is these bullets!" Sarge cocked his shotgun. "Billing address: your body. Free shipping on orders over twenty-five dollars."

"That’s a really good deal," Donut stage whispered to Grif. "Lemme add something to your order."

"Never mind," Grif sighed. "I’m good.”

Wash shook his head. Rounding up the sim troopers for the call from UNSC command had been easy enough, but getting them to stay in one place was proving to be a challenge; it was for show, and all of them knew it, which didn’t give them much incentive to play nice. But as the root of a growing number of embarrassments for the UNSC in recent years, the Reds and Blues being present would light a fire under Command’s collective ass, or at least serve as a reminder that Chorus would need to be treated as a priority if they didn’t want that string of embarrassments to carry on indefinitely.

It worked both ways, he knew: Command would want the Reds and Blues where they could see them from now on, safely tethered within arm’s reach. The same went for him and Carolina, of course, and Hargrove, and Maine’s armor, and the other trophies they’d spent the last week digging out of the crash site. All the broken pieces of Project Freelancer, swept up into one neat little dustpan in the coldest, farthest, least publicly-visible reaches of space. How wonderfully convenient for them.

"General Kimball, incoming transmission from Command," said the comms officer.

"Put them through," she ordered, and stood at attention. The largest screen mounted above the console flickered with static, then cleared somewhat to display a snowy image of a man in UNSC uniform. “Admiral Kern,” she greeted. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me directly, sir.”

“General Kimball,” said Kern, although the audio quality left much to be desired. Chorus was as far as possible from wherever he was likely to be broadcasting, so not much of a surprise there. “Good to speak with you at last.”

“Likewise, Admiral. My people are eager for some good news.”

"Well, that I can help you with. We’ve arranged transport and resupply from planets nearest to your location and ships are en route with emergency aid. Current ETA is approximately six weeks.”

“Six _weeks_?” Grif hissed under his breath. “Come on…”

“That is almost a month,” said Caboose, and Wash quickly shushed him.

“We’re glad to hear it, Admiral,” said Kimball. “We look forward to permanent reestablished contact with the UNSC.”

"And we as well. You may proceed with your report."

Kimball nodded. “Yes, sir. According to the crash site evaluation conducted by former Project Freelancer Agents Carolina and Washington, most of the equipment on board Hargrove’s flagship was legal. His private military force was UNSC, so no surprise we found some weaponry I presume you’ll find went missing from your armories at some point. But most of what was on the manifest belongs legally to either Hargrove or Charon Industries. I suspect anything seized by his men in their raids on passing ships was taken to local storage facilities."

"Local? Not off-world?"

"The most valuable items were given to Hargrove personally, but not the common assets. They wouldn’t have risked larger off-world shipments while they were trying to keep us grounded here. And Hargrove’s long-term goal was always control of Chorus and its resources -- they’d planned on staying here for a long time.”

“Understood. Speaking of those valuable assets, there are a few items of particular interest in your preliminary report. The M374 Hephaestus armor is secure?"

"Yes, sir,” said Kimball. Wash risked a glance at Carolina, who stood silent at Kimball’s back and did not react. “It sustained damage during the crash and went into lockdown, and all its enhancements were run to the point of failure. But all the pieces are intact."

"And the AI you recovered that belonged to Dr. Leonard Church?”

"FILSS isn’t in as good shape, I’m afraid. We have technicians working on recovering her data."

Kern nodded. "Excellent work, General. You’ve managed well with limited resources in a difficult situation. When our ships arrive, we will assume custody of Malcolm Hargrove and oversee the resupply of your troops. Your priority is to find where the remaining equipment may have been taken and secure it."

Ah. There it was. Wash had been waiting to hear when the first order would arrive, and he could tell from the rigid jerk of Kimball’s shoulders that she’d heard it, too. Though she herself and many of the soldiers who were left had been civilians before the civil war, the UNSC still had legitimate enough claim to Chorus via the Federal Army to exert their influence and prevent it from falling out of their hands again. What could they do to resist -- go to war with the UNSC next? "Sir,” said Kimball, with clearly practiced patience, “reestablishing a permanent settlement is a high priority for us. Chorus has completely collapsed. If we don’t start building a government--"

"Of course, General. Feel free to move your operations to Valerosa while you await UNSC support. Our diplomats will be in contact about forming a new government as soon as possible."

"Diplomats?"

"You’re a marooned military force, General, not a political one. Military forces make for poor governments. Until then, proceed with the investigation of possible Charon storage facilities.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kimball, and the screen faded to black.

“What a prick,” said Grif.

"We knew they’d try to strongarm us, but I didn’t think they’d be so obvious about it," said Carolina.

Kimball took a datapad her aide was offering to her and immediately went to work on it. "This isn’t unexpected. We’ll use Hargrove and the salvaged equipment as leverage if we have to."

"They might be less accommodating once they find out about the Epsilon fragments," Wash noted. "We can hide them in the Meta’s armor for now, but Delta’s on record. Once they see him…”

"He can pass for a normal AI. We’ll figure out what to do with the others when we get the armor out of lockdown." Kimball looked to Simmons, as if reminded of something. "Captain, where are we with FILSS?"

“Oh, uh…” Simmons cleared his throat. “We managed to get her out of the ship and into local storage, but getting past her security is taking a really long time. If we screw up, we lose everything.”

“Why don’t we ask the green guy to help?” asked Grif. “He’s an AI. Shouldn’t he know his way around another computer?”

“FILSS is one thing,” said Kimball, “but those smart AI fragments are dangerous -- and valuable. No one touches any of them or the combat suit until the UNSC arrives.”

“Hey,” Grif said to Simmons with a shrug, “I tried. Good luck with your nerd work, nerd.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Simmons flatly.

"Wash," Sarge grunted. "C’mere a sec."

He waved Wash over to a corner of the war room away from potential eavesdroppers. The motion was stiffer than usual, restricted by fresh wounds that may have one day fully healed in a younger man. Wash wasn’t particularly concerned, however; Sarge was a tough old bastard. He’d power through.

"Been meaning to talk to you about one of your men…” said Sarge.

“Is something wrong?"

"You could say that. You could also say your dumb blue baby duckling’s gone and confused me for his mama."

"...Caboose?"

"Bingo. Boy’s been hanging around, following my men to training drills. Keeps saying he’s on Red Team. Now, I always knew this day would come -- defections to the clearly superior team are inevitable! But I got as much respect for you as is possible to grant a no-good dirty rotten Blue, and with one man already wounded, well, that’d just be an unfair advantage. So I wanted to give you a heads up."

"Thanks," said Wash. "I think."

"Don’t you got a leash for him or something?"

Wash sighed. On the other side of the war room, Caboose was chatting animatedly with Donut -- nothing out of the ordinary, but in light of Sarge’s observation, it triggered a slight pang of guilt. "I guess I haven’t had much time to keep up with him lately," he admitted.  "I’ll talk to him, see what’s up.”

"Good man." Sarge clapped him on his shoulder (the bad one, of course), and grunted thoughtfully as he turned away. "Though I suppose I could always give him _Grif’s_ room…”

Wash watched carefully as Caboose left, following closely on Donut’s heels, and wondered what exactly you were supposed to say to someone who’d lost their best friend for the third or fourth time.  
  
  
  


 

 

Training drills occupied most of the afternoon, so it wasn’t until later that evening that Wash had time to check on Caboose. His room was roughly in the middle of the hallway in the officers’ quarters, with Tucker and Carolina on either side of him and Caboose across the way. (A highly strategic choice; if they’d elected to take the rooms at one end of the hall, Wash was 99% sure Sarge would have set up at the other end and called it Red Base, and no one needed to be in the middle of that.) The Reds had settled in only a few doors down from them, just far enough to keep up the appearance of rivalry without being out of reach, and Wash understood the instinct. For all the work they did, for what they’d gained and lost here, the United Army of Chorus wasn’t where they belonged. Easier to remember the waterfall and shoreline and sunny cliffsides of Valhalla if they stuck together.

He stopped outside his room, a datapad full of work tucked under his arm. Caboose’s door was open and Wash could see him throwing various items of clothing, food, and weaponry into an equipment bag that sat open on his bunk. He was in armor, except for his helmet; the old Mk. V one Wash had repaired for him had been destroyed up on the _Staff of Charon_ , the visor pierced clean through by an unlucky burst of metal shrapnel from an explosion. Its replacement sat in a place of honor in the middle of his desk, a New Republic-style helmet painted regulation blue all over by someone Wash strongly suspected was Lt. Andersmith.

He went into his own room, put his work down on his desk, got out of his armor and into civvies, and went back to the door across the hall. "Caboose," said Wash gently. "Where you going, buddy?"

Caboose jumped and yelped in alarm, turning his whole body around to face him. The medical patch covering his right eye provided a stark reminder as to why turning just his head wasn’t quite enough anymore. "Oh… Agent Washington…” he sighed, his good eye darting nervously around his room. "Um… going? I was just… taking Freckles for a walk! Yes, just, a very long walk. For a while."

"That sounds nice." Wash leaned on the doorframe and gestured toward the duffel bag sitting open on Caboose’s bunk. "You’re taking all your things with you?"

"Ah… yes. Um, Freckles does not have a leash? And, y’know, I need to be ready to travel alone in case he runs into the street and gets hit by a car and dies and leaves me all by myself with no one to love me."

"Wow."

"Yeah, I, I should’ve taken him to obedience school when he was a puppy."

Wash cautiously stepped into the room, sat down on the edge of the little bunk and gestured beside him to indicate Caboose should do the same. When Caboose lied, he did it with his entire body, and there was no mistaking what his rigid posture and tightly hunched shoulders meant as he gingerly sat his hulking frame down next to Wash. "Sarge told me you’re trying to join Red Team," he said. "You wanna tell me what’s going on?"

Caboose whined, long and loud, and the wide slope of his shoulders slumped in despair at being caught out. "I can’t stay on Blue Team anymore, Agent Washington," he choked. "I didn’t want to tell you, but… you should know the truth about me."

"What truth?"

"I’m… I’m a pirate."

"I… I don’t--"

"Yeah, it started with the eyepatch, but I can feel the wooden leg about to come on. Don’t come near me. It’s probably contagious." Caboose sniffled. "I’m gonna go join the Reds. Colonel Sergeant will take me in. We have to stay with our own kind."

Wash dearly wished Tucker was here to help him interpret what was happening. Caboose’s non sequiturs could be baffling, but there was often a weird thread of logic to them, a symptom of some real-world thing that troubled him...

 _Don’t come near me. It’s probably contagious_.

Wash sighed. "Caboose, I know you... miss him. But it wasn’t your fault. Or Tucker’s, for that matter, or anyone’s."

"Yeah," said Caboose. "Yeah, it kinda was. We were probably gonna die. Everyone always says that and doesn’t mean it, but I think they really did mean it this time. So Church had to die instead of us. And I don’t think he’s coming back again, so from now on when something bad happens, it’ll probably happen to you."

"You don’t have to worry about me," Wash promised. "I’m not so bad for a washed-up old Freelancer, y’know. I’ve got a few good fights left in me."

"Yeah, I know. You’re a better fighter than me or Tucker, so… next time we mess up, you’ll have to…”

Caboose’s breath hitched, and Wash had to look at the floor because, okay, now he was crying for _real_ , and although he liked to think he’d made great strides in the emotional stability department, that was something he was absolutely not equipped to handle. "You don’t give yourself enough credit," he said, staring firmly at the floor. "It’s not just you or Tucker or me -- it’s us as a unit. We’ve got each other’s backs."

"But you won’t be here forever, because I will probably shoot you or blow you up with a tank... or drop something heavy on you or turn you into a gun." Caboose hiccupped. "Being my friend is really, really hard."

"Not forever," Wash agreed. "But for now. For as long as possible. But it’s not Blue Team without you, buddy."

Caboose sniffled, but the heaving in his chest seemed to be coming under control. "Colonel Sergeant doesn’t want me anyway," he conceded glumly.

"Sarge has a lot on his plate, I think. Don’t take it personally. Being a leader is tough."

"Yeah, I know. I was leader for a little while… It wasn’t all that great."

"I remember."

"You’re a much better leader than me. Church was a better leader than me, too." Caboose’s face crumpled. "Yeah, I… I miss Church…"

For a moment Wash thought he was going to break down again, but instead, he reached into the bag sitting next to him and pulled out a datapad. He keyed it, uttering a sad little “Beep... boop...” as he did, and a small hologram appeared in the air before them, a familiar figure glowing blue-white in the dark room.

 _"Hey, guys,"_ said Epsilon. _"If you’re hearing this it means--"_

"What did he say in your message, Agent Washington?" Caboose asked, his voice low and mournful over the quiet digitized one.

Wash shook his head. "Nothing. He didn’t leave one for me."

"Oh. That’s strange. Just like Carolina…”

Wash frowned, though it went unnoticed by Caboose while he was wrapped up in listening to Epsilon’s final message. _That_ was news to him. When they’d discovered the individualized messages and he’d realized there was nothing for him, he’d understood, and honestly had been a little relieved. A few words right at the end of everything wasn’t nearly enough to resolve what they’d done to each other, and both of them knew -- intimately and uncomfortably well -- that it wasn’t what either of them wanted.

But Carolina…? She and Epsilon had been so close. God damn it. Why hadn’t she said something?

"They didn’t like goodbyes, I guess," he said slowly.

"Me neither," said Caboose. He drew his knees up close to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, and watched the tiny image of what used to be his best friend fade out forever. "But I guess I’m getting pretty good at it."

Wash sat with him a while so he wouldn’t have to try to think of a reason to leave.  
  
  
  
  
  


 

His conversation with Caboose shadowed him over the following weeks. He’d be in the middle of shouting Bitters into another ten pushups, or slamming Smith into the heavy mats in the training room, or gripping the dashboard of the Warthog for dear life as Jensen practiced her driving in the field behind the base, and suddenly he’d think about what it meant to be thrown into a warzone the way these kids had been, wondered what they must have lost before he’d even met them. Sometimes he’d catch them daydreaming, staring off in the direction of a squad returning from a mission, and he wondered if they were still looking for people who hadn’t checked in after the battle against Hargrove’s ground forces. He’d remember Caboose sitting next to him and mourning their friend, the way he sort of wished he was still able to, the way Carolina wasn’t given a chance.

The way Tucker refused.

Three weeks after the crash, Tucker was still refusing to listen to Epsilon’s last words. It wasn’t healthy, even he knew that, and Wash was about the last person with the authority to make that call. He was still kind of irritated at how easily Tucker had deflected him the last time he’d visited, but he needed to talk some sense into him, to get him to deal with what had happened.

It’d probably turn into a shouting match, which was why he’d put it off so long. But enough was enough.

The infirmary was on his way to the training room if he took the slightly longer route, which he often did after morning drills as an excuse to check up on Tucker’s recovery. His bed wasn’t visible from the doorway, but if he leaned in far enough he could at least see if someone was with him, and he was satisfied to discover there usually was. Only medics at first, but gradually the crowd began to include people he recognized: the Reds had come and gone in pairs, first Grif and Simmons, then Sarge and Donut; Kimball, on one occasion when she could carve out the time from her busy schedule; and of course the lieutenants were a common fixture, especially Palomo, which must have irritated Tucker to no end.

Today was apparently Palomo’s turn again. He wasn’t watching where he was going and nearly bowled Wash over in the infirmary doorway, and they were spared a head-on collision only by Wash sidestepping out of his way at the last second. A horrified silence passed between them when Palomo noticed who he’d almost slammed into, and Wash opened his mouth to issue a stern reprimand before he suddenly recalled Tucker’s breathless _holy shit, Palomo was right_ and he choked on the words.

"...Lieutenant," he said stiffly.

Palomo recovered from his momentary paralysis and furiously nodded his acknowledgement. He shuffled off down the hall as fast as he could manage with a limp he had apparently sustained at some point, and Wash didn’t wait around in case he decided to come back.

 _You have a_ thing _for me._

He grit his teeth. God damn it. Since when was Palomo that attentive? How had he slipped up? He could never, ever admit he was right. The soldiers he led and trained were so responsive because they both feared and respected him, and that would all evaporate in a heartbeat if they thought he had a soft spot for the mouthiest officer on base. He’d have to figure out how to quash whatever rumor had already spread to save whatever was left of his reputation.

The curtain around Tucker’s bed was drawn. Undoubtedly he was not in the mood for visitors after being hounded by his hapless subordinate, but this was important. When he parted the curtain, he saw him curled up in a ball on his bed, the sheet pulled all the way up over his head in a childish, defensive posture. “This a bad time?” he asked wryly.

"Yes," came the heavily-muffled response.

Wash chuckled and walked around the side of the bed. “Palomo giving you grief? I could keep him busy if it’d make you feel better." He listened to the frantic beep of the heart monitor for a moment, and then pressed on when it seemed that Tucker wasn’t going to respond. "Dr. Grey let it slip that you might be getting out soon. Wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

Tucker hummed noncommittally.

Wash rolled his eyes. “All right, enough. I can’t take you seriously like this."

He grabbed the edge of the sheet covering Tucker’s body, and when he yanked it down, he was faced with a cowering young soldier he'd never seen before in his life.

“O-Oh,” he stammered. “Uh... sorry, I must have the wrong--” But before he could finish, the HUD on the inside of his visor lit up with IFF data and told him everything he needed to know.

“Oh my god, Agent Washington," Palomo gasped. "I just got a girlfriend, I have so much to live for, _please_ don't kill me."

“Oh, you have _got_ to be goddamn kidding me.” Wash instantly switched on his radio and opened a direct channel to Palomo's headset, now who-knows-where without him. “Tucker, I know it's you in there. What the hell are you doing? You're not cleared to be back in armor yet, you're gonna hurt yourself.”

What he heard back was a crackle of static, and then a softly muttered, “Fuck.”

“Where are you?”

“Sorry, Wash, you're breaking up and shit. Palomo's radio settings are weird, he must have fucked them up somehow. Shit, I'm losing you, _kshhhhh_ \--”

“You're just-- you're literally just making static noises with your mouth--” Tucker's voice cut out abruptly as he switched off his radio, and Wash felt the first violent throb of an oncoming headache in his temple. He turned to Palomo, now huddled on the bed with the sheet pulled up to his nose, and demanded, “Where's he going?”

“No idea, sir, honest!”

“Palomo,” Wash warned. “Wanna know how bad it is to be caught impersonating your C.O.?”

“Well, I mean... technically he's impersonating me? So--”

“ _Palomo_!”

“A-Armor! He mentioned his armor. But not, like, _his_ armor. I think he meant that kickass suit he was wearing when the medics brought him in.”

Wash swore under his breath and turned on his heel, not even bothering to dismiss Palomo as he opened another radio channel. “Simmons, Donut, Lopez, one of you come in,” he barked, already storming out of the infirmary. “Tucker slipped past me, he's going to the armory. Who's posted there?”

“Tucker's out of bed?” Donut chirped back. “Finally!”

“ _Estoy de vacaciones_.”

“You're right, Lopez. That _is_ great news!”

“ _Idiota._ ”

“I'm here,” said Simmons. “You want me to send him back or something?”

“No, I'm on my way. Just don't let him touch anything.”

“Got it.”

The headache in his temple had already spread behind his eyes by the time he arrived at the armory. He slipped in unseen, using the stacks of equipment crates and weapon racks as cover. Tucker was at the back of the room, listing heavily under the strain of standing upright and, of course, engaged in a heated argument with Simmons, who stood behind a stack of crates that had been fashioned into a makeshift desk. Wash drew just close enough to eavesdrop, and waited in the shadows.

“That is such bullshit--”

“It's _evidence_ , Tucker.”

“Goddammit, dude, how long have we known each other? Do me this one favor.”

“I _can't,_ this thing is on lockdown. Seriously, like, thumbprint, retinal scan type shit. No one but Kimball is authorized to get anywhere near it.”

“Fine, then I'll go to Kimball. She’ll say yes, by the way, because she, unlike you, is a _friend_."

Simmons bristled at that, and he drew himself up to his full towering height over Tucker -- but instead of rising to the bait, he said, far louder than necessary and without turning his helmet an inch, “Hi, Agent Washington! What a pleasant surprise.”

Tucker’s helmet swivelled around as Wash emerged from cover, and then snapped back to Simmons. "You ratted me out? You fucking kiss-ass."

"Suck it, Blue."

"Whoa, and make Grif jealous?"

"Knock it off, both of you," Wash snapped. "Tucker, mind explaining why you’re not in the infirmary?"

"Uh, ‘cause it’s boring as fuck?" he grumbled back. "Seriously, I got stuff to do, I can’t just lie around all day waiting for my fucking bones to get their shit together."

"That’s recovery, Tucker."

"Yeah, I know. And it’s _booriiing_."

"So, what, you’re about to break security protocols because you’re bored? I already told you, the suit’s off-limits."

He didn’t need to be able to see Tucker’s face to know he was rolling his eyes -- the sentiment was perfectly clear as his head lolled on his shoulders dramatically. "Yeah, I _know_ , all right? Don’t talk to me like I’m some idiot rookie."

"Then stop _acting_ like one. You’re a captain -- being responsible for subordinates doesn’t mean you get to use them for your own stupid stunts. Palomo’s lucky it was me who found him; he could have gotten in actual trouble because of you."

"Oh-ho my god, is there someone _else’s_ dick you could go be on right now?"

"Yikes," said Simmons. "Uh, I think I heard-- I left my-- you know what, fuck it, I’m just gonna go."

Wash used the time it took for Simmons to clear the room to count backwards from ten, his headache throbbing with every beat. Tucker, for his part, seemed a little ashamed of himself, or so his closed-off body language would suggest as he stood there with his arms crossed and head turned away. "I’m not kidding, Tucker," he said. "The UNSC is putting a lot of pressure on Kimball to keep that armor safe. Forget Palomo, you could get us _all_ in a lot of trouble if something goes wrong with it."

"So, what, are you gonna report me?"

"Don’t be an idiot," Wash chastised him -- but he let it come out a little easier than he’d been up until now, and Tucker’s defensive posture relaxed slightly at his change in tone. "That’d just cause us more trouble. But come on… the Meta’s suit is impressive, I’ll give you that. But was it worth the risk of hurting yourself again to get to it?"

“I don't give a shit about the armor, Wash. I wanted--” Tucker sighed irritably, and lowered his voice. " _Them_."

"...The fragments?"

"We can’t hand them over. You give that armor to the UNSC, they’ll want to know how I was able to run it. They’ll start asking questions about where the AI is, and they’ll want him, too." Tucker shook his head. "They want the equipment, the pieces? Fine -- but we can’t give them Church."

Wash hesitated. _Church_ , still. Calling Epsilon that had been one thing, but from what he’d seen of the new Delta, he knew Church’s core personality hadn’t been inherited when he’d splintered. The fragments seemed to get further and further away from the real thing with every iteration -- not necessarily a bad thing, in Wash’s experience with the human original, but not what Tucker wanted to hear right now. "Tucker, they aren’t… exactly the same as--"

"Stop," Tucker snapped. "Don’t fucking say it. We’ll figure out how to put them back together or something. We’ll get him back."

"Like with Alpha? You really think it’d end any better this time?" When Tucker didn’t respond, Wash sighed, and tried his best to let his concern override his frustration. “Please, Tucker... go back to the infirmary. You need rest.”

“I'm fine. Want me to run laps? I never thought I’d say this, but I’m fucking dying for some exercise."

"If you couldn’t even spot me on your motion tracker you have no business running laps in armor. I’ll be by to check on you later, and I expect you to be there."

Wash turned his back to leave, and in a second, Tucker grabbed his shoulder guard and shoved him bodily into the nearest stack of equipment crates. Before he could demand an explanation, Tucker was in his space and snarling, "God dammit, just fucking _hit_ _me_ already!"

"Tucker, what the _hell_ \--?"

"You’re pissed off, right? You won’t stop looming over me like you’re just waiting for me to fuck up again." Tucker’s grip on his arm tightened. " _I’m sorry_ , okay? I should have been more careful, but I wasn’t, and you got fucked up. Same with Rogers and Cunningham, same with--” He broke off, swallowed whatever he’d been about to say next, and shook his head. “Shit like this is why I need to be better, I know that. You don’t have to keep breathing down my neck about it."

So that’s what this was about. "It was an accident,” Wash reminded him calmly. “I attacked you; you were just defending yourself. I’m not angry."

Tucker barked out an ugly laugh. “Holy fuck, of course. Back when it was just you and me and Caboose we couldn’t go a day without you screaming at us in registers only dogs can hear, but _now_ you’ve got it all together? Give me a break.”

“What would I be angry about? _It’s over_. We’re going home. Just a few months later than we expected.”

"There’s no _going home_ for us, Wash. That’s like -- the one thing about Felix and Locus I actually got." Tucker shook his head. "Civilians? After all this? I don’t even know what the fuck I’d _do_ . Maybe before, maybe back in Blood Gulch, but now? He fucking took _all of that_ away."

“Hargrove will pay for his crimes,” Wash vowed. “The UNSC will see to that much, at least.”

“Oh my god, are you fucking kidding me? He’s an old, rich, white dude! Pricks like that don’t go to _prison_ ,” Tucker snarled. “Pricks like that cut _deals_ , and sell out _other_ pricks, _bigger_ pricks, and nothing fucking _ever--_ ” But he cut off his rising fury with what looked like tremendous physical effort, forcefully recoiling and turning his helmet away before he could finish that thought. When he had calmed himself again with one long, wheezing breath, Tucker fixed him with a withering glare, blazing and resolute even through his visor, and Wash could see the tension in his frame, could sense the quiet frustration rippling off him in waves. “You fucked up,” he said, quiet once more. "You should’ve let me kill him."

Wash’s stomach sank.

Tucker gave him one last shove into the equipment crates as he stormed past, and left the armory without looking back. Wash stood there, allowing himself a moment to pause and grapple with the sick feeling that had overcome him at Tucker’s confession, that phantom chill that radiated outward from the thin vertical scar on the back of his neck. His skin felt diseased there, where Epsilon had shattered and stuck, leaving behind a driving need for revenge and no way to be sure which of them owned it.

He waited until the feeling passed, and then went back to work.


	3. Chapter 3

 

_The mercs put up a hell of a fight, and he ends up separated from Jensen and Bitters early on. He finds Caboose first, crouched in a corner with line of sight on the intersecting corridors, blood streaked across his chestplate and the shattered visor of his helmet, and Sarge’s unmoving body shielded by his own. Freckles auto-targets and guns down the last Charon merc left alive in the corridor, and then Dr. Grey rushes to Sarge, declares him unconscious, not dead, and Wash lets out a tightly-held breath. When she tries to help Caboose next he insists he’s fine, an assurance punctuated by a mechanical "TARGET ELIMINATED" as Freckles puts down another merc who’d appeared up ahead._

_"We’re here to get you out," says Wash. "Take Sarge and go with Dr. Grey."_

_"I can’t. Not without Church and Tucker."_

_"I’ll find them, don’t worry. I need you to carry Sarge. Grey, you need to cover them."_

_"Okay..." wheezes Caboose. He lifts a hand toward his wounded face before remembering he’s still wearing a helmet, and sways a little as he gets to his feet. "They went after the chair man. They said he’s at the river."_

_"River?" Grey repeats._

_"Yeah, he went across it."_

_"The bridge," says Wash, and he raises the second fire team on his radio. "Carolina, I made contact. Hargrove’s on the bridge, I’m headed there now."_

_"We’re pinned down," she shouts back over the staccato burst of background gunfire. "Wait for Kimball, she’ll back you up."_

_"There’s no time. I’m sending Grey back with Caboose and Sarge. Clear the hangar and prep the Pelicans for evac."_

_"Roger."_

_Even wounded as he is, Caboose hefts Sarge’s unconscious body over his back like it’s nothing, and he sets off with Grey back to the hangar. Wash waits until they’ve cleared the sector before pushing onward._

_He can hear fighting from all directions, which he hopes explains where the rest of the sim troopers are. He follows a trail of dead Charon mercs through the ship until he arrives at what he thinks is the bridge, and hits the controls for the doors, rifle at the ready._

_But there’s no preparing him for what he sees when the doors slide open: the back of a soldier in stark white armor streaked with blood and ash, Malcolm Hargrove lifted high above him, his throat seized in his left hand, and Wash pauses for just a second, paralyzed. His IFF readings come up blank, but he doesn’t need them -- every piece of that imposing armor is familiar and terrifying and should be at the bottom of an icy Sidewinder sea._

_ _

_He doesn’t have time to think. The activated energy sword in the Meta’s right hand -- the sword, Tucker’s sword, Tucker is fucking_ dead _\-- is already moving and Hargrove will be skewered in less than a second unless he acts. He opens fire. The first bullets ricochet off the armor harmlessly, then one strikes an unarmored elbow and the Meta drops Hargrove out of reflex. Wash’s rifle clicks empty and he throws it down as he draws his combat knife and charges in. The Meta ignores him, doesn’t even dignify his attack with so much as a glance, just grabs the cowering Hargrove again and pulls his sword back to strike, and Wash sinks his knife into the flesh under his arm, into the gap between the front and back plates of his armor. The Meta screams and swears and lashes out wildly to shake him off--_

 _The end of the sword catches the front of his chestplate, and his field of vision explodes in a shower of sparks as the white-hot blade slices clean through his armor and bodysuit, down to the flesh underneath. For a long, dizzying moment he’s floating and feeling nothing at all, like missing the last step on a staircase, and it isn’t until he collapses in a heap at the Meta’s feet that he’s aware of the_ breathtaking _pain bursting in a stinging, searing line across his torso._

_"Shit… Oh, shit, no!" shouts Tucker, and somewhere in the rapidly-shrinking part of his mind that’s still aware of his surroundings, Wash thinks he’s losing his tenuous grip on sanity._

_Hargrove hits the deck like a sack of bricks and Wash’s own body feels a hundred miles away as Tucker hauls him upright to elevate his head. Piercing alarms burst across his HUD as his suit begins to fail, as Tucker screams something at him and tears at the connectors beneath his chestplate to get it off and expose the wound underneath. Wash’s unfocused eyes slide from Meta-Tucker’s helmet to an alert just to the right on his HUD --_ [on-board medical suite offline] -- _not that he needed the warning because obviously nothing is getting through, no painkillers, no biofoam, and his cauterized nerve endings are on fire--_

_"Tucker," says a calm, even voice, and Wash sees a soft glow of green from somewhere at the edge of his fading vision. "This suit is equipped with a healing unit. Give it to Agent Washington."_

_"Fuck! Okay… all right, hang on…” Tucker fumbles with the white suit, rips out a component and drops it, but successfully attaches it to Wash’s armor. "Fuck, his suit’s-- He can’t fucking run this, get in there and help him!"_

_"Wash will not want me to be in--"_

_"Pretty sure he won’t want to be dead even more! Get the fuck in there!"_

_"Acknowledged."_

_Half a second later, the healing unit kicks into full gear -- or at least Wash thinks that’s what happens, because the relief of pain is immediate and blissful. He chokes, spits a mouthful of blood out into his helmet, and rasps, "Ep... Epsil…”_

_"He is no longer here," says Delta, from a distance that feels uncomfortably close. There’s a pressure in his skull when he speaks, a buzzing in his teeth, and Wash screws his eyes shut tight against the foreign sensation, trying not to remember this -- the incision in his neck, the operating room floor, goodbyes left unsaid in the driveway outside their house-- "Agent Washington, your pulse is spiking. Please remain calm."_

_"Tucker..."_

_"You’re okay," pants Tucker, shaking with the effort of every word. "Holy… fucking Jesus Christ…”_

_"He’s getting away!" says Theta, and now Wash is sure he’s losing it because Epsilon can barely be in_ one _place, much less two. But Delta is still in his suit running the healing unit and he can definitely see the soft purple glow of Theta’s image projected right next to Tucker’s head, is pretty sure that’s not a hallucination--_

 _"Hey -- hey, get the fuck back here you asshole!" Tucker shouts. Into his radio, he barks, "Hargrove’s getting away, someone grab-- oh,_ fuck _!"_

_Wash doesn’t see what’s happened, but from the way Tucker dives down and covers him protectively with his entire body, he can make an educated guess. He cringes as he waits for the grenade to explode, hears Tucker shout, "Someone fucking lock us down!" and Delta say, "Acknowled--"_

  
  


 

Wash bolted upright in his bunk, sweating and shaking, yanked out of a restless sleep by years of conditioning and a nagging sense that something was wrong. The combat knife he kept under his pillow was already in his hand. He sat still and alert as he came to full awareness, not even sure what had woken him until he heard it again -- a muffled rumble followed by distant, panicked shouting. Unmistakably an explosion.

He vaulted out of bed and was halfway into his armor by the time the alarms started blaring through the halls. He jammed on his helmet: the HUD read 02h35 local. "What the hell was that?" he barked into his radio. The open channel was buzzing with static and confused chatter. "Carolina, you there? Sarge?"

"Bombs," said Carolina, and Wash was briefly dismayed she answered so quickly. No sleep for her, either. "One at the motor pool, sounded like the other was toward the south wing."

"I’ll be right there."

"No, hang tight, we’re checking it out. Get ready in case we need you."

"Copy that." He finished attaching his arm guards, grabbed his rifle from its stand, and threw open his door. Flashing emergency lights and piercing sirens were rousing the soldiers lucky enough to have been asleep, but Caboose’s door remained closed. Wash pounded it three times in rapid succession. At Grif’s door down the hall, he could see Simmons doing the same. "Caboose, let’s go!"

"I’m coming!" Caboose yelled above the wail of the sirens, and he slid open his door a second later, Freckles clutched tightly against his chestplate. "I’m here!"

"The fuck’s going on?" Grif grumbled, half-asleep and still clumsily struggling to secure his greaves. "This better not be a fucking drill..."

"Does it seem like a drill, numbnuts?!" Simmons snapped. “There was a huge explosion! We’re probably under attack!”

"Fucking great...”

A crackle of static sounded in his ear, and Carolina’s clipped voice cut through a second later. "Remote detonation," she said. "Motor pool and the south guard post. We’ve got a few injuries, but no enemies sighted."

Kimball's response over their radios was swift and sharp. "They won't be far, these detonators are short range. Emergency Code Echo. Keep off open channels until the base is secure."

Code Echo: lockdown procedure, active hostiles still on site. They'd drilled this multiple times. "I've got the north wing sweep," said Wash over Carolina’s private channel. "You?"

"Perimeter," she replied. "If they're here I'll keep them in."

"Good luck."

"You too."

Wash turned to Caboose, one of the soldiers under his command for this particular emergency maneuver. "Caboose, listen very carefully. I need you to go to the infirmary and make sure it’s secure. Get Tucker out if people start shooting."

"Okay!”

"Donut, go with ‘im." To his right, Sarge had sidled up next to him with the Reds in tow. "Keep ‘im out of trouble."

"You got it, Sarge!" said Donut. "C’mon, Caboose, let’s go get your man!"

"It’s not like that. We are just friend...emies," mumbled Caboose, and they set off toward the infirmary.

"All right," said Wash to the Reds. "Let’s move."

Even as quiet as the base had been since their victory against Charon, the halls were quickly filled with soldiers springing to action and rushing to their posts. Wash scrutinized everyone he passed, but saw nothing out of the ordinary -- no one where they shouldn’t be, no behaviour out of line with the shock of a surprise midnight raid during peace time -- and he began to wonder if Kimball was wrong to keep their attention directed on-base. Maybe Carolina was going to have her hands full at the perimeter after all...

When he had almost reached his post where he would meet his assigned squad, Caboose's voice sounded a note of panic in his ear. "Agent Washington! Tucker is gone!"

"What do you mean, 'gone'?" he demanded. "Where is he?"

"I don't know. He's not here with the sleeping people."

Wash stopped short in the middle of the hallway. Before he could ask for confirmation, Donut spoke next. "Yeah... they're not sleeping, Wash. Everyone's dead. Shootout, it looks like. Medics, other patients--"

"Jesus Christ..."

"Tucker's not here though. He must have gotten away."

"Report in to Sarge. Take Caboose with you. And keep an eye out for Tucker, he's out of radio contact without his armor." Wash paused and considered heading to the armory instead of his post -- if Tucker had done the stupid, stubborn thing he suspected, then that was likely to be his first stop -- but he quickly decided against it. Someone would find him soon enough with everyone on base mobilized, and Tucker was more than capable of defending himself until then. Neutralizing the current threat came first.

He arrived at the north wing entrance to find his squad waiting for him, minus Caboose: for this particular emergency maneuver, it consisted of Lowell, Smith, and a handful of rookies under Smith’s command.  "Where’s the Captain?" Smith asked, with a predictable note of concern.

"Change of plans," said Wash. "He’ll catch up with us. Everyone, sweep your assigned sectors and report back. No radio unless you make contact with intruders."

They confirmed their orders, and headed out. Wash took one of the rookies with him as he cautiously cleared first his own sector, then Caboose’s without incident. He itched to be in contact, hated being in the dark in an emergency, and the feeling only intensified as the minutes ticked by. After he’d circled back around and met with his team again, he opened a private channel to Kimball to make his report. “Reports are in from sectors 8 through 11,” he said. “No sign of intruders.”

"They’re still inside," said Kimball. "Whoever they are, they’re ours."

"I was thinking the same thing."

"Send your troops to report in to me, and re-check their sectors. Pass the order down, and be discreet."

"Copy," said Wash. He nodded at Lowell and Smith. "I’m on watch, I need you two to take your men and report in to Kimball."

"Will you be all right alone, sir?" Smith asked, and when Wash cocked his head curiously in response, Smith recanted. "Uh, right. Never mind. Good luck."

Wash waited until they cleared the area before heading immediately to Lowell’s sector -- the prison block. His sector had been clean, so was the one he’d checked for Caboose. That left two, and the prison was the highest priority target.

He heard it as he approached -- distant shouting from the cell block area. He picked up his pace, turned a corner, and saw the first dead soldiers in New Republic armor, lying crumpled on the floor in the middle of the hall. "Kimball, this is Washington," he said. "Casualties in the prison block -- Lieutenant Lowell’s sector. She’s headed your way, apprehend her."

"God damn it…” said Kimball. "I’m sending you backup."

"Tell them to be careful, we still don’t know how many we’re dealing with." Wash paused, and then radioed Smith next. "Smith, listen carefully. Lowell is compromised. I need you to--" He stopped speaking when he realized he was hearing nothing but static on the other end. "Smith? Shit…”

"Guards!" cried a voice from the cells. "Someone...!"

Wash hurried down the hall, rifle raised. He arrived at the entrance to the cell block in time to watch a soldier in aqua armor key a code into the lock on one of the cells, and when his IFF lit up friendly-unit yellow across his HUD, and Wash held his breath. He paused the second he should have on the _Staff of Charon,_ trying to reconcile the ID with the corpses he’d stepped over to get here, and then called out, "Tucker! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!"

Tucker looked up at the sound of his voice, and froze.

 

"Please, stop him!" called Hargrove from inside the cell. "I’ve cooperated entirely with Kimball’s forces, there’s no need for--"

"Shut up!" Wash snapped. "Tucker, get away from him."

Tucker remained rooted to the spot, one hand tightly grasping his pistol, and the other hovering near his hip where his deactivated energy sword sat ready, and Wash felt sick to his stomach. The armory. He’d found him in the goddamn armory _weeks_ ago, he could have gotten his armor and weapons back at any time-- "He needs to die," Tucker said, his voice low and determined.

"Drop the gun. And the sword," said Wash, struggling to keep the tremor out of his voice as he watched Tucker slowly comply with his order and raise his hands in surrender. "Get away from the cell. Hands behind your head."

Tucker did as he was told, and Wash inched forward far enough to look through the tiny window of the cell door. Hargrove was crammed into a corner inside and babbling relieved platitudes, profusely grateful to have a foot of solid steel and concrete still between them. "Wash--" said Tucker.

"Shut up," said Wash viciously. "No excuses. Get moving."

Tucker’s helmet turned just slightly, and then he saw it: movement on his trackers, four marks to his rear and swiftly closing in on their position -- backup for one of them, and with their forces compromised, no way to tell for whom. He stood there with his rifle aimed squarely at the center of Tucker’s visor and hesitated for as long as possible -- and when the markers had almost converged on them, Tucker dove left and he vaulted right, and rolled into the cover of a cell door alcove just in time to avoid the hail of gunfire blazing down the length of the cell block toward them.

He waited for a pause in the shooting and peeked out from his cover, then ducked back in when the bullets resumed flying in his direction. Federal Army armor, all four of them, and there was no question he was their target. He tried his radio to call for help and found it jammed. Across the room on the other side of the stream of bullets flying between them, Tucker had recovered his weapons and was at Hargrove’s door again.

"Tucker, stop!" he shouted. A stray bullet caught the barrel of his rifle when he raised it to fire and sent it flying out of his hands and skittering across the floor. Out of desperation he drew his knife and threw it, and it when it struck the keypad on the cell door and shorted out the circuit board inside, Tucker finally gave up and turned his gun on him.

The first bullet glanced off his helmet, an inch above his visor. The momentum tipped his upper body backward and the second struck him in the unarmored area above his chestplate, and though the titanium alloy of his undersuit held, the force of the impact stunned him for a second. It was enough to create an opening, for Tucker to dash across the room, get into his space, and slam his weight into his bad shoulder, knocking him off balance and against the wall. Wash retaliated in kind, driving swift, sharp punches to the vulnerable areas in the gaps in his armor -- _broken ribs, bruised lungs, weak arm, one, two, three_ \--

But by then the four Feds had fanned out around them and cocked their weapons, and it was over. Wash abruptly stopped fighting, allowing Tucker to get one more punch in, and he raised his hands in surrender.

"Stand down, sir. You’re still recovering," said the Fed to his left, and Tucker fell to the back of the group, his breath rattling heavily. To the soldier next to him, he said, “Put Agent Washington in a cell. You two get Hargrove’s door open."

One of the Feds keyed open the nearest cell, already occupied by another captive Charon mercenary. Wash was busy calculating -- _knocking away the one on the left’s rifle would buy maybe three seconds, just stay low and_ \-- when the sound of shouting and armored footsteps approaching made them all freeze up. Before they could react, he seized the moment of distraction, jabbed the nearest Fed in the throat, took his gun, and started firing. He both landed and took several hits before Tucker produced an orange teleportation cube and hurled it at the floor, and then he and the Feds were gone just as backup rounded the corner.

“Agent Washington!” shouted Caboose, and Wash turned in time to see him and the Reds arrive. “You found Tucker! Where is he going?”

“I don’t know,” said Wash shakily.

“What the fuck is happening?!” yelped Simmons. “What’s with all the dead people?!”

“I don’t _know_ \--”

“Uhhhh, dude, you’ve been shot,” said Grif, gesturing to his torso, and Wash was about to snap at him in his growing frustration until he looked down to see blood seeping out of a glancing wound in his side. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Wash, though he felt pretty far from it now that the adrenaline was fading and his exhaustion was catching up. He switched on his radio and mentally prepared himself for a gruelling report. “Give me a minute. I need to talk to Kimball.”

  
  
  
  


They found Smith shot in the back in an access corridor -- miraculously still clinging to life, though his rookies hadn’t been so lucky. After they rushed him to the nearest emergency medical station and then the medics carted him off to the ICU, Doc insisted on getting Wash’s wounds dressed properly and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He sat on the floor outside the med station in a daze, his upper body armor in a pile beside him and his bodysuit peeled down to his waist so Doc could patch him up. He made a weak effort at keeping up a distracted, perfunctory conversation with Doc as he chattered away worriedly at him, but he could barely focus. His head was a swirling fog of confusion and doubt, and the shaky image of Tucker lining up his pistol to fire at him loomed in the forefront of his mind.

He hadn’t intended to miss.

When Doc finally let him go and he was back in armor, Wash made his way to the war room. News of the attack was spreading across the compound like wildfire now that radio silence had been lifted, and he caught the same words gossiped in hushed tones over and over: Feds. Traitors. Assassins.

 _Tucker_.

He arrived in the crowded war room and slipped in back with Caboose and the Reds in time to hear Kimball speaking to the image of Admiral Kern on the comm screen. "We don’t believe at this time the insurgents have significant traction, or strength," she said. "If we were dealing with more than a squad or two they would have launched a larger assault. As it stands, it seems the initial explosions were a diversion to draw our forces away from the prison block so they could get to Hargrove."

"Will security of our assets be a problem?" asked Kern.

"We’ve already apprehended a suspect and are pressing her to identify the others," said Kimball, and Wash was unsurprised at the stiffness in her answer. If he were in her place, reporting to someone instead of taking action would be the last thing he’d want to be doing, too. "We’ve doubled security detail on Hargrove to be sure."

"Doubling your troops is little comfort when an attack comes from within your own ranks, General."

"These are people I trust personally."

"As opposed to Lavernius Tucker?"

Kimball’s helmet bowed just slightly. "Tucker will be… dealt with."

"See to it. I want a status report in three hours. Dismissed."

The comm screen blinked off, and Wash immediately demanded, "What do you mean ‘dealt with’?"

"Wash--" said Carolina in a warning tone, but Kimball cut her off.

"Tucker facilitated an attack on this compound," she said wearily. "We’re going to find him and bring him to justice."

"Uhhh…” said Grif. "You mean _our_ Tucker? Obnoxious asshole, actually trying to be a decent soldier now Tucker?"

"Look, let’s... not rush into this,” said Wash. “Going after Hargrove is one thing, but this was a full-scale attack. Tucker can take stupid risks, but he put his life on the line for your people, just like the rest of us. He’s not a traitor.”

"We have two dozen dead soldiers and a smoking crater where our motor pool used to be that suggest otherwise," Kimball shot back. "You saw him, Agent Washington. Are you going to defend his actions?"

Wash hesitated. Everyone in the room was staring at him; Kimball and her top soldiers with glaring distrust, and his friends with the expectation that he would provide the solution, the magic bullet that would convince them this was all a huge mistake. “It was… definitely his armor,” he conceded. “But there’s no way to know for sure it was really him inside it. Lowell was in charge of the salvage team that found his armor on Hargrove’s ship -- they could have taken it, falsified our inventory. If so, then we’re looking at people with armory access--"

"Which Tucker had for his own equipment," Kimball reminded him. “And it’s not just the armor. When you reported in, you said he _spoke_ to you."

"It could have been -- voice filters, recordings,” said Wash, and he knew he was grasping at straws, but there had to be _some_ explanation that made sense. “If this came from inside, who knows what resources they had access to."

"That’s pure speculation. I need solid proof, and right now, the evidence is stacked against him." She turned to her advisor and said, "Get me a list of everyone on duty tonight and bring them in for questioning. I want to talk to every Fed soldier who might have known these people. We’re going to figure out who they are."

"We can’t round up one half of your army and ignore the other," said Carolina. "You need to do this in a way that won’t give the wrong impression."

“Every dead soldier is New Republic, and every identified attacker Federal Army,” said Kimball. “What do you suggest I should do?”

As Carolina and Kimball argued back and forth, Simmons turned to his teammates and murmured, "We’re not really going after Tucker, are we?"

"Dunno," Sarge grunted. "I’m with Wash. Something smells fishy."

"Yeah! I’m sure he had a… perfectly good reason to shoot at you, Wash…” said Donut.

"Oh, whatever," Grif snapped. "How’s that any different from how the Blues normally operate? Tucker’s just upholding a proud Blue Team tradition of trying to kill their leader."

"He’s not even very good at it," Caboose added, a little too proudly.

"Yeah, see? He even fucked up team-killing. Some military mastermind."

Hearing the others agree with his doubts eased the dread in the pit of Wash’s stomach slightly, even if it was nothing more than wishful thinking on their parts. "We’ll get to the bottom of this," he promised them. "Tucker wouldn’t do this to us unless something forced his hand."

"Wash…” said Kimball, softer and more sympathetic after her aside with Carolina. "I know what it feels like to be betrayed. The rug gets pulled out from under you, and you start to second guess everything and everyone. But that caution isn’t always a bad thing -- it’s what keeps the people left behind safe. We have to look at the facts; we can’t afford to let our personal feelings about Tucker interfere with our judgement."

"I wouldn’t say we have _feelings_ about Tucker," Simmons protested. "More like sustained annoyance, and maybe a little jealousy regarding his apparent personal value to his team?"

" _Some_ of us definitely have feelings about Tucker, dude," said Grif, staring pointedly in Wash’s direction.

"Shut up, both of you," he warned. "Kimball, you don’t need to lecture me about caution. Tucker may be my friend, but I’m perfectly capable of rationally assessing my squad. This isn’t personal."

"And I’m capable of seeing behavioral patterns in my troops," said Kimball. "When the Feds had you in custody I set clear conditions on when Tucker would be permitted to search for you -- conditions he disregarded the moment they became prohibitive. When he has something personal at stake, there is no order or obligation that can stand in his way."

"You’re making a mistake."

“Malcolm Hargrove is responsible for the death of his friend. Are you saying Tucker is incapable of seeking revenge?”

Wash opened his mouth to speak, and then didn’t. He remembered the slow-burning anger in Tucker’s eyes as he lay in his infirmary bed, remembered the Sangheili sword poised to strike on the bridge of the _Staff of Charon_. Remembered his own feelings of rage and emptiness and aching loss that had never gone away, not even after they’d taken Epsilon’s inactive memory unit out of his head, and he said nothing.

"Surveillance in the infirmary and prison block was offline at the time of the attack, but we’re combing through everything we’ve got," said Kimball. "Honestly… I hope you’re right. But we’ll know for sure once we find these people, one way or the other." She turned to the New Republic commanders behind her. "In the meantime, sweep the surrounding area. Find Tucker and his collaborators and bring them in."

"Yes, ma’am."

"Alive?" asked Wash bitterly.

Kimball let his jab fall to the wayside, and Wash would have been impressed by her restraint if he hadn’t been so pissed off. "If at all possible," she said calmly.  "You’re dismissed, Agent Washington. Carolina -- my office, now."

Wash turned his back, ignoring the worried sidelong glances of his friends and the frustrated way Carolina said his name as he stormed out. He already knew there’d be no fighting this head-on; there was too much political bullshit at stake. He’d do what needed to be done, and he’d do it on his own if there was no other way.

That old, familiar knot of despair and resolve in his chest, the one that tightened every time he found himself cut off from someone he should have been able to trust, was almost a comfort.


	4. Chapter 4

The base was eerily quiet as he returned to his quarters. It was all hands on deck to deal with the aftermath of the attack, but despite how many soldiers were active, the pall that had fallen over the compound seemed to suppress everything -- sound, color, feeling. The soldiers who did speak were the younger ones, the ones who didn’t yet understand how meaningless it was to ask _is it over?_ at a time like this, and even then they spoke in timid whispers that suggested they knew damn well it wasn’t.

It almost had been, he’d thought. Now he wondered how he could have been stupid enough believe that.

Wash paused outside his room. Tucker’s door was open, and inside his room he could see soldiers tearing it apart, ripping the sheets from the untouched bed and examining every crack in the walls. They wouldn’t find anything. Tucker had been in the infirmary since they’d moved to this base; there was nothing in there except the barest essentials of equipment they’d moved for him from the New Republic stronghold. Undoubtedly there were United Army soldiers headed there now to search for clues, to rifle through anything Tucker had ever laid hands on, desperate for any shred of evidence that might lead them to answers.

As much as he didn’t want to, Wash sympathized.

He went into his room and threw himself down on the bunk in full armor, closed his eyes and sank into darkness and silence. He lay there on his back and replayed the night’s events over in his mind, picking them over for details he could use. Fed insurgents. Tucker’s armor. Tucker raising his gun and firing, without hesitation...  

_You should have let me kill him._

Wash opened his eyes and let out a long, controlled breath to quell the flutter of anxiety in his gut and the fire at the base of his skull. He had to do something. He had to get to Tucker first. It was the only way to stop this before it escalated further. But even with all the time he’d spent with the Feds, he wasn’t sure he knew enough about their hideouts and habits to be able to track them down before Kimball’s forces. He needed help. He needed someone who knew the Feds better than him, someone with no stake in--

He sat up, his heart suddenly pounding, and held the idea like a grenade with the pin halfway out. It was stupid, and dangerous -- but it was the only solution. There was no one else, and no time to waste.

He got up and started grabbing anything useful he could find: the datapad from the desk, the spare pistol under his bunk, extra ammo, emergency rations. He threw everything into his gear bag on autopilot, formulating his plan as he packed, already thinking about how to circumvent security at the motor pool to steal a vehicle, if by some chance they hadn’t all been destroyed in the attack…

He zipped up the bag on his desk, and his hands stopped moving. This was rash, and he wasn’t sure if it was the kind of rash that would save them or make things worse. It was going to put a target on his back either way. The smart option would be to wait, like he had after Freelancer, quiet and compliant until they forgot he was a threat and exposed their throats to him. But there was no time to play the long game now.

He’d find the truth for himself, and then… well. He didn’t know what came after that. He’d do whatever was necessary with it, he supposed.

No one stopped him on the way to the motor pool. He marched in confidently and surveyed the damage for himself: several wrecked vehicles he could no longer identify sat in a scrap heap by the still-smoking hole that had been blasted in the outer wall, but at least one Mongoose and a few Warthogs had survived. He wasn’t sure yet what it meant that the motor pool had been one of the bombing targets -- the obvious answer was that the insurgents had retreated somewhere close by and didn’t want ground troops reaching them to strike back, but it could just as easily have been misdirection, or a meaningless diversion that would hurt them in future skirmishes. Whatever the case, it wasn’t his concern just yet. Right now he just needed to cover a lot of ground as quietly as possible. He’d wait for the mechanics to leave, grab the Mongoose, and--

"You asshole," Carolina hissed behind him, and Wash nearly jumped out of his armor. "You’re going after him?"

"Keep it down," he shushed her, glancing toward the mechanics who had now noticed his presence. "I don’t have a choice. If they get to Tucker--"

"You’re going to leave Kimball with _two_ AWOL officers an hour after we’ve been attacked? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What the hell is wrong with _her_?!" Wash shot back. "What about this situation seems normal to these people?"

Carolina tilted her helmet back toward the door, and as irritated as he was, he went without complaint. He followed her around the corner and into the secluded stairwell to the second floor, where she pulled him aside and said, "She’s more sympathetic than it seems, you know."

He scoffed. "Sure didn’t sound that way."

"This is coming from higher up than Kimball, Wash. She’s on our side, but she had to make it look good for the officers."

"Well, you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not interested in being used for good optics."

"Drop it. You’re the one who let her get under your skin."

"She’s throwing Tucker to the goddamn wolves!"

"Yeah, wolves is a good way to put it," she growled. "The UNSC is practically _salivating_ to unseat whatever government gets set up here, and Tucker just gift-wrapped them an excuse to do it. The people of this planet are facing the very real possibility of losing everything they’ve fought for and handing it over to the assholes who abandoned them when they needed it most. Kimball’s just making sure they get to keep what they fought and died for."

"Is that what she called you into her office to tell you?"

"Yes," said Carolina stiffly. "She values my skills and insight, and I want to help her. Is that a problem?"

"All I’m saying is we need to stick together. And you’ve gotten pretty cozy with her lately."

Her helmet dipped downward just slightly, and he could hear her teeth bared when she said pointedly, "I could say the same about you and Tucker."

Whoops. He really needed to learn how to stop short of that line before he crossed it. "...Sorry. That was uncalled for," he admitted. "You’re right… She’s just protecting her own. But I’m the leader of Tucker’s squad, which makes him my responsibility. So I have to do the same."

Carolina folded her arms and paced the width of the stairwell, unable to keep still. "Tucker was a friend to the New Republic before either of us arrived," she reminded him. "Kimball trusts him, too. She’s not an idiot, of _course_ none of this adds up. She wants answers as much as we do, and she won’t let her people kill him without getting them."

"Having been on the receiving end of UNSC justice, that’s not exactly a comfort," he argued. "He’s as good as dead either way, Carolina. If he’s innocent, the stigma will overshadow what’s left of his military career; if he’s not, the UNSC will make sure he rots in prison for the rest of his life. Christ, and Tucker’s _kid_? If we don’t do something this is going to ruin them."

Carolina sighed, long and heavy, and turned her head away to look over her left shoulder. Wash stared at the empty space beside her helmet that didn’t fill with Epsilon’s sputtering light and acerbic scolding, and felt his resolve waver. If he screwed this up, if he got himself killed chasing after Tucker just because somehow that last bit of hope still left in him hadn’t been stamped out yet -- he didn’t want to think _she’d have no one left_ , because that wasn’t quite true anymore. But he was the last link she had to their old lives, a living reminder of what they’d done and escaped and survived. He didn’t want to throw that away carelessly if he could at all help it.

"Back in the war room you sounded so sure it wasn’t really him," she said. "How do you know?"

Wash dearly wished he had an answer. He could see Tucker raising his pistol and lining up the shot that nearly pierced his visor. Felt the phantom pain in his chest, the blazing heat of the plasma sword cutting him open. His knuckles burned where he’d jabbed them into Tucker’s ribs, and his fingers twitched as he closed them into tight fists at his sides. "I don’t," he said, truthfully. "It’s just a feeling."

Carolina’s helmet tipped to one side in a curious gesture. "We don’t really do feelings," she said. "It’s intuition."

"Yeah. I guess…”

"So what was it? Did he do something strange?"

"...He shot at me."

"Aside from that."

"No, that _was_ the strange thing," said Wash slowly -- thinking out loud as he pieced it together. "He shot at me. He didn’t use his sword."

"He almost killed you with that sword. Maybe he didn’t want to risk it again."

"Maybe," he conceded. Tucker’s guilt over the accident had certainly been transparent enough to support that theory. But it wasn’t just _him_ Tucker chose not to cut open, was it? "All right, then why use the security code on the cell door? He could have cut Hargrove out of there -- it definitely would have been faster, less risky. But he didn’t. Even after I broke the keypad, he gave up instead of using the sword. Maybe he _couldn’t_ use it."

"Okay," said Carolina, in that even tone of voice she used when she wanted him to think, to talk out strategy so they could see it from all angles. "Let’s assume your guess is right. That leaves us with two questions."

"Where’s Tucker?" said Wash. "And why isn’t he dead?"

She nodded. "Exactly. Whether he went willingly or not, Tucker going missing from the infirmary _now_ means he’s with those Fed soldiers. And the sword won’t work for anyone else until Tucker is dead, so that means they’re keeping him alive." Carolina shrugged helplessly. "Why? Why set bombs _and_ attack Hargrove _and_ take Tucker? They could have coerced or convinced one guard to kill Hargrove quietly, but they didn’t."

"They wanted the entire base on alert," said Wash, voicing his realization aloud. "They wanted us to see Tucker."

"Which means Tucker is a big flashing distraction for something else. Great." Carolina leaned against the wall of the stairwell, less on guard now and more thoughtful, more clearly on board with his train of thought. "It’s a plausible theory, but Tucker being seen in the cell block and having motive is a stronger one. And it looks bad for him that you caught him sneaking off to the armory once already. Did he say anything strange when you found him there?”

“Nothing I can think of,” he lied. He understood his anger -- both Tucker’s and whatever amalgamation had formed out of Tucker’s grief and Epsilon’s dying thoughts. No need to incriminate him even further over things said in the heat of an argument. He was distracted enough by the memory of it that it took another moment for the implication of her statement to sink in fully. “Wait… Tucker told you about that?”

Her helmet swivelled away from him almost imperceptibly; he wasn’t supposed to have caught that part. “Sort of. I heard about it from Simmons, and then I went to Tucker. I lectured him about security protocols, and he asked about your… inclinations.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m sanitizing it a little.”

“I can imagine."

“Wash…” she said, with an air of hesitation,and his skin prickled with dread as he realized what she was about to say. "I wasn’t going to ask, but… given the mess we’re in, I think you should tell me if there’s anything I need to know about--”

"It’s not like that," he assured her, cutting her off as quickly as possible. God. He really did not need to be having this conversation. And when she didn’t say anything in response, clearly unsatisfied with that answer, he reluctantly added, “It... won’t get in the way of the mission.”

“I know that,” said Carolina. “But could it help?”

“Help? How?”

"You trust him, right?"

"Yes," he said, without reservation.

She nodded again. "All right. Then hang onto that. Use it to find him, and bring him back."

His back straightened as he realized what she meant. "You want me to go?"

"Search teams will start going out in an hour," she said, pushing off the wall and moving toward the hallway. "You can’t go with them, of course, not after that display in the war room. Kimball wants you to look into those suspected Charon storage facilities. That’s the UNSC’s top priority, after all. If the search teams find Tucker, Kimball will deal with him as the UNSC sees fit. But there’s a lot of ground to cover out there. Nothing she can do if someone else finds him first, right?"

"Carolina... If they find out you and Kimball authorized--"

"Then we’ll make sure they don’t. Take a few people you can trust, and be quick and careful."

"Some extra muscle might be useful..." he mused. "All right. I’ll take Caboose -- keep him out of harm’s way if things go south here once they realize we’re gone. Maybe Sarge, he seemed to side with me pretty quickly earlier."

"Get them ready. I’ll be in contact once we recover the security data."

"...Thanks, boss," said Wash, a smile spreading behind his visor and the tightness in his chest easing a little at hearing the fondness in her tone. It was a bad habit, his penchant for striking out alone when the world turned upside down -- an old and sensible one that had kept him alive this long, but also one that kept him isolated from the people who wanted to help him. Sometimes he still needed the reminder that things weren’t like that anymore. That when the worst happened, he wouldn’t be left behind to fend for himself again -- someone would be there to have his back. "Glad to be working together on this."

"Sure makes things a lot easier," she agreed. "Any idea where you’re going to start looking?"

He shook his head. "Sorry. There’s no one here who’d be happy about it, so the less you know, the better. I’ll need the security footage later, so work on gathering whatever you can. When I’m back in range I’ll contact you for it."

"Leave it to me. And be careful."

"Always am, boss." He watched her turn away to leave, but before she could make it more than a handful of steps, he said, “Carolina… Why didn’t you tell me Epsilon didn’t leave you a message?"

She stopped with her back to him, and he instantly regretted asking the question. Friends supporting each other was one thing -- but personal was personal.

"Never mind," he said hastily. "It’s none of my business. Just… take care of yourself, all right?"

The rigid line of her shoulders relaxed a little, forcibly. "We’ve lost enough on this planet already, Wash," she said quietly. "Just bring him back safe."

He made no such promise, and she didn’t wait for him to give one -- not because there were no guarantees, but because there were no other options.

  
  
  
  
  


Caboose was on board, as always ("I get to drive!" had been his only stipulation, and Wash had agreed because even with reduced depth perception that was the safest place for him to be). Sarge was the surprise. He’d expected him to grumble and argue and tack on at least three impossible conditions to his cooperation, but he’d simply grunted approvingly and required only one ("I’m driving," to which Wash had said, "Of course," and decided he could fight Caboose for the job if he wanted it badly enough. He hadn’t).

They took one of the remaining Warthogs and set out into the pre-dawn jungle, Caboose at the wheel, Sarge in the gunner position, and Wash riding shotgun. It would take them all day to reach Crash Site Bravo by ground and Wash wanted to be ready when they arrived, so he spent the early hours of the trip working on programming the transmitter he’d taken from the base, first by the glow of his helmet lamps, then by slowly strengthening daylight.

"Sure would feel a lot better about this plan of yours if we had some of them glowy thingies with us," said Sarge over their radios.

"Them glowy thingies," Wash repeated.

"Yeah! You know, them AI whatchamacallits. They’re pretty handy in a fight. Kinda like a little fairy to watch over us."

"They used to be," Wash agreed. "The fragments aren’t in much of a state to help anyone anymore though."

"Church could do it," said Caboose proudly. "Church could do anything he set his mind to."

"Except stay in one piece," muttered Sarge.

"Oh, now that-- that was just not very nice--"

"Eyes on the road, Caboose!" Wash yelped as the jeep veered sharply right, and Caboose snapped back to attention from having been turned halfway around in his seat to scold Sarge.

"There is no road, Agent Washington," he said once the jeep was back under his control. "And I only have one eye. This is not going well."

"You’re doing fine. Just keep heading east."

The tension in his shoulders didn’t ease after Caboose had stabilized the Warthog. He set the transmitter down at his feet and gripped the stock of his rifle, staring first out into the jungle, and then back toward the beaten-down path they were travelling.

Sarge noticed him fidgeting, and swung the mounted machine gun around to face the same direction as him. "Something wrong?"

"No," said Wash, and he forced himself to settle back down in his seat. "Everything’s fine."

"...I need to use the bathroom," said Caboose quietly.

Wash closed his eyes behind his visor and hoped that wherever Tucker was, he damn well appreciated this rescue mission.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

It was quiet here.

That was his first muffled thought, the one that made it to being a fully-formed _thought_ with _words_ instead of an impression on the ebbing tide of unconsciousness, and he knew right away he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. The infirmary wasn’t quiet. The infirmary was overstuffed with injured people, dying people, and medics younger than him making it up as they went along and not always succeeding. That wasn’t a recipe for _quiet_.

Tucker’s eyes cracked open. He stared up at the unfamiliar concrete ceiling above him with blurred vision, and when he blinked to clear it his eyes burned, dry and painful. Dehydrated. He didn’t remember being put under -- when the hell had that happened? How long had he been out?

 _Oh my god_ , was his next thought. _What the fuck oh my god what the fuck did Doc do to me._

His left hand itched ( _oh thank god, not amputated_ ), and Tucker turned his head to see the needle of an IV drip taped down on the back of it. Still hospitalized, wherever the fuck he was, and a surge of irritation welled up in him. This was so stupid. His head swam when he moved and his body felt impossibly heavy like he was submerged in molasses, but still, he was way past needing bed rest at this point. Probably Wash’s doing. Fuck, that guy was gonna mother hen him to fucking death.

Tucker moved to rip the IV needle out with his free hand -- only to realize at the sudden halt and startling clang of metal on metal that it wasn’t as free as he’d thought. He looked to his right hand and saw that his movement was restricted to just a few inches by a cuff around his wrist, locked to the side of the bed frame.

Okay. Either that really hot medic would be along any second and this was about to be the best day he’d spent on this shitty planet so far, or… something less good was going on.

He settled back against his pillow and tried to stay calm. Nothing good would come of losing his head now. He flexed his fingers and tested his restraint, but -- no good. He wouldn’t be getting out that way. The heaviness in his limbs alarmed him more now as he realized it was probably because of whatever was in that goddamn IV, something to keep him under that was now wearing off. With tremendous effort, he rolled onto his left side as far as he could and lifted his arm to his mouth, managed after a couple of tries to get the tube between his teeth and rip the needle out of his hand, and collapsed against the mattress again, panting with the effort.

"Hey," he rasped, his voice raw and grating as he raised it to be heard outside the room. "Assholes. Where the fuck are you?"

His voice bounced off the bare walls of the empty space. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he saw now it was no bigger than the quarters back at base, only twice as wide as the bed he was confined to and a little longer. Two doors, one with light seeping in at the edges, and one without -- a toilet if he was lucky. If this was another Fed outpost then there could be a mirror in there. If he could somehow get that far and break it, he’d have a weapon. He sank against his pillow and closed his eyes, felt his muscles weigh him down like they were lined with lead. It was a terrible plan, but he had nothing else. And focusing on it was keeping him from losing his shit, so hey. Win-win.

But one step at a time. Tucker grit his teeth and struggled to move his legs, trying to wake them from their drug-induced paralysis.

Time to see if all those motherfucking leg days paid off.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Daylight was waning by the time they arrived at Crash Site Bravo.

They set up camp in the remains of what used to be Blue Base, the makeshift shelter built underneath the _Hand of Merope_ ’s bisected hull, and Wash immediately set to work with Sarge to prepare their lure: a Freelancer recovery beacon. He described the signal as best he could, worked through it trial and error with Sarge (with some limited help from Caboose, who had also heard one before) until he was able to recreate it on the transmitter they’d brought with them from the base.

"You sure this is gonna work?" Sarge asked from the ground below the comm tower platform. "Them United Army soldiers won’t come runnin’ when we turn this thing on?"

"If they do, I’ll say we found the signal when we got here and are investigating." Wash tapped the control panel, then slammed it with the heel of his palm to encourage it not to die. "Chorus was already cut off from the galaxy by the time the Recovery program had started. They won’t know what it is. And anyway, they’ve got more immediate problems. They won’t waste time coming all this way when they’ve got a few dozen Fed outposts they need to be searching."

Sarge grunted thoughtfully. "Hell, I wouldn’t come back here if I didn’t have to either."

"Let’s hope Kimball’s men feel the same way."

"Um, excuse me," said Caboose, down on the ground with Sarge and fretfully clutching Freckles for protection. "Yes, so, what happens when Mr. Locust hears our super secret distress signal and sees that we... are not... in distress...?"

"Son, if Locus shows up, I can promise ya we’ll be in plenty of distress.”

"He won’t do anything to us," Wash assured them. "There’s nothing in it for him anymore. But he _will_ probably assume it’s a trap, so expect him to be cagey."

"Now there’s a thought," said Sarge. "Shoulda brought a cage."

"Hey, I’m trying to show some goodwill here." Wash turned a dial, flicked a switch, and delivered one more smack to the control panel for good measure. "Besides, you wanna try keeping him somewhere he doesn’t want to be kept? Be my guest."

"Hurm. Good point."

The hum and crackle of electricity filled the humid night air as the comm tower powered up. "Perfect," said Wash. "Sarge, toss me the transmitter."

"All right," said Sarge warily, throwing the device up to him in an easy underhand arc. "But if we die, I want it known it was how I always knew I’d go out: because some Blue idiot couldn’t keep his bright ideas to himself."

"Someone will carve it into your headstone," Wash promised, and switched on their manufactured distress beacon.

Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  
  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of talking. Seriously a lot of talking.

"Ohhh myyyy god! My bed is still here!"

"Caboose, wait a second! Don’t just jump on it, check the mattress for--"

" **HOSTILES DETECTED** ." _Blamblamblamblam--_ " **HOSTILES ELIMINATED**."

"Hunh. Your little Terminator friend don’t like them lizard critters much."

"Yeahhhh… He used to use them for target practice. You know what they say: you can’t teach an old dog not to play tricks on things with bullets. Um, Agent Washington, Freckles made a mess in my bed. Can I... sleep in... yours?"

Wash sighed. This was going to be a long night. "Grab the cots. Let’s drag them down to the common area."

As it turned out, more than the local pests had been left behind when they’d abandoned Blue Base all those months ago. The solar-powered lamps they found in their old quarters still worked, and so did the electric space heater around which they gravitated on their mattresses, the equipment and the power to run it both salvaged from the shipwreck after they’d first crashed. Wash had found a sniper rifle left upstairs and took to cleaning it to keep himself busy, while Sarge sat nearby with his helmet on, listening for a response to their beacon, and Caboose snored away contentedly.

"Paul Bunyan’s ghost, that boy sounds like he’s sawin’ down the whole jungle!" Sarge fiddled with the settings on his helmet, presumably to filter out the noise so he could focus on the distress signal. "He like this every night? Startin’ to see where you got those bags under your eyes."

Wash chuckled. "It’s not so bad. Snoring means he’s sleeping. Not much of that going around lately."

All that time he’d spent with Maine must have made him pretty good at finding nuance in limited verbalization, because when Sarge simply grunted back, he found it an oddly thoughtful, sympathetic sound. "You should get some shut-eye yourself. I don’t wanna get taken out by Locus because you fell asleep on the job."

"In a bit."

"Don’t wanna let your guard down, eh? Smart man." Sarge bowed his head, listening to the beacon with his shotgun angled toward the base entrance, and Wash turned his attention back to the rifle, pushed another patch through it and grimaced to see it come out the end of the barrel still dirty. He was content to work in silence, but it wasn’t long before Sarge began fidgeting, unable to sit still with the threat of enemy contact looming large. "Times like this make me miss the good ol’ days," he continued wistfully. "Back in Blood Gulch with the boys, tradin’ bullets with those crafty Blues. I used to sit up late like this and plan our glorious day of victory."

"I’m guessing this isn’t quite how you imagined it," said Wash dryly.

"Definitely thought there’d be a lot more dead Blues involved. And a lot fewer dangerous rescue missions to stop even _more_ Blues from gettin’ dead. Never thought I’d say this, but you boys could stand to maybe lay off all the dyin’." When Wash shoved the cleaning rod down the rifle bore again instead of responding, Sarge cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Er… too soon?"

"Maybe you should get it out of your system while Tucker and Caboose can’t hear you."

"Ahh, I ain’t gonna speak ill of the smart-mouthed, good-for-nothin’ dead. Church was a pain in the backside, but he was our pain in the backside. Always gettin’ himself worked up into a tizzy over nothin’. No wonder everyone thinks he had somethin’ to do with it."

"With what?”

"With Tucker goin’ bonkers! That’s what happened to you, ain’t it? Church tried to go to the big floppy disk in the sky and you went on to murder your way outta Freelancer. Seems to me like havin’ another brain go kablooey inside yours does that to a person. ‘Specially if it belonged to that angry back-talkin’ computer friend of yours."

Wash flinched inside his helmet, and wished he could argue. “There’s a lot about the AI and their implantation we never really understood," he admitted. “Tucker was... shaken, but he was nowhere near as messed up as I was. Who knows… Maybe his experience was normal and I’m just the one who went crazy. If you can call pulling a gun on me normal."

"C’mon, Wash," Sarge chided him. "Tucker didn’t try to kill nobody."

Wash blinked, taken aback by the assurance in Sarge’s tone -- not just sympathy or understanding this time, but real, honest conviction. "You really believe that?" he prodded curiously.

"Son, I’ve known Tucker a long time," said Sarge with a weary shake of his helmet. "A torturously, _irritatingly_ long time. And he’s changed a lot since you came along, but one thing about him hasn’t changed a bit: down underneath those crude jokes and that nearly Grif-level laziness… he’s a good man. And good men don’t do the kinda thing he’s accused of."

"I tried to tell him the same thing," said Wash. "That all he had to do was drop the stupid bravado and actually apply himself and he could be a good soldier."

"No, no, that ain’t what I said. Oh, he’s a good soldier, too, no two ways about it, but that ain’t the same thing. Good men don’t stab their buddies in the back. Good soldiers, well…" And here Sarge paused, tilted his helmet to one side in a careful gesture, and Wash could see the years weighing heavy on the slope of his shoulders, caught the barest glimpse of whoever he’d been before he’d been relegated to Freelancer cannon fodder. "Good soldiers do the worst things a man can think of, and then some.”

Wash’s hand stilled when the new patch came halfway out the barrel’s end, still not clean. "That’s... surprisingly generous, coming from you," he said.

"Now don’t get me wrong. Tucker’s a sassmaster if I ever saw one, and if he were my subordinate I’da put a boot up his keister ages ago! But him and Caboose are the only Blues left from our canyon, and even if he don’t say it, Tucker ain’t the kind of man who forgets stuff like that." Sarge shook his head. "Killin’ Hargrove? Sure, he could do that. That lousy low-life’s hurt a lot of innocent folks. But turnin’ on us? On you and Caboose? Never in a million years."

Wash looked at Caboose, still sound asleep. For all their childish spats and arguments, all the quarrelling that came with forced close-quarters living with other people, he couldn’t imagine either of them turning their back on him, or on each other. They had allies now -- the Reds, Carolina, Kimball -- but when those bonds were tested, the three of them were still tied to each other, and each of them knew it. "Yeah," he said. "I think you’re right."

Sarge snorted. "Course I’m right! And good on ya for seein’ it. Faith in your unit’s an admirable trait for a leader, Wash -- you’re a good man, too." And when Wash got as far as making an uneasy noise that marked the start of a denial, Sarge snapped, "Don’t be modest, boy; that’s the coward’s way out. You did right by us. Did right by Church. If you hadn’t seen what they did to him and aimed to fix it, Freelancer would have gotten away with everything. Like I said: good man."

"I know what a sack of shit I was, Sarge, you don’t have to sugar-coat it," Wash countered. "There was nothing good or heroic about it -- the Director dropped a grenade in my lap, and I lobbed it back at him. Epsilon had no idea I was going to help; he probably saw me as another one of the Director’s tools to torture him, and just… lashed out."

"That what you think happened to Tucker?"

Wash shook his head.  "No. I don’t think Epsilon meant to hurt him. You’re right -- Tucker’s a good person. But I was a good soldier, and I got what was coming to me."

"Nah," said Sarge, as obstinate in this as he was in everything else. "A good soldier woulda looked the other way."

Wash didn’t pursue the argument any further, choosing instead to focus his attention on cleaning the rifle. The last patch in the kit came out still sullied, even after all his effort. Not perfect, nowhere even close; but maybe good enough for now.

  
  
  
  


Night on Chorus never felt as alien as it should have. Wash listened to the nocturnal serenade of the local fauna as he sat perched behind a support pillar in the exposed upper level of Blue Base, the sniper rifle in his hands and aimed out at the canyon, toward the comm tower. He used to lay awake listening to those strange chirps and distant, guttural squawks in the weeks after the crash, at night after Tucker and Caboose had finally stopped griping at each other and gone to sleep, and he was left alone with his thoughts and the knowledge that they might never make it off this planet. The sounds were odd, but familiar somehow, a single step removed from the sounds in the woods behind his childhood home, and it had made the isolation of this forgotten jungle canyon a little easier to bear.

 _We’ll just have to live here_ , he’d thought. _Those squawking things sound big enough to eat. If they don’t get us first._

He’d turned the volume down on his headset to avoid the constant drone of the simulated recovery beacon irritating his frayed nerves any further. Caboose was still asleep and now Sarge had turned in too, leaving him on watch. Keeping his eyes open was becoming a struggle, but he forced himself to stare down the rifle’s night-vision scope. The comm tower platform was clearly visible from this angle; he couldn’t see beyond the bend in the canyon past that, but anyone who wanted to approach would need to come from this direction. They’d relied on that strategy in the past whenever Sarge had launched one of his overly-complicated attack plans from the canyon’s opposite end.

Wash’s gaze lingered on the tower platform. If this mess had happened back then, back when they’d first crashed, he wondered if he would have let Tucker go. Chalked it up to another backstab on his depressingly long list, and eventually numbed the sting of betrayal with a bullet in Tucker’s head the next time they met. And if not that time -- if the days of uneasy camaraderie in Valhalla had already softened him by then -- he certainly would have not long before that. At Sidewinder, perhaps, or Sandtrap. But that was before the doors of the Fed base had slid open and they were there: Tucker, Caboose, and the Reds. They had _come back_ for him, had made him their _priority_ , and Wash had known instantly that if the time ever came for him to return that favor, he would do it in a heartbeat.

He’d learned later on from the lieutenants that Tucker in particular had never given up on finding him. He’d sworn to himself to return that favor, too.

Radio static crackled in his ear, and he shot to full wakefulness.

"You’re a long way from home, Agent Washington," said a deep, low voice.

Wash held his breath to steady the sway of the rifle. He sat very still, and carefully eyed the canyon walls and tree branches near the comm tower. Nothing visible, though that was hardly a surprise; Locus would stay cloaked until he felt safe. "Looks like we both are."

There was a pause where nothing moved and no sound followed but the hiss of white noise in his ear. Then, a quiet statement: "You’ve been looking for me."

"And you’ve been following us."

"Perhaps..."

"I’m not looking for a fight, Locus. You know that, or I’d have a bullet in my head already. It’s just me and two of the sim troopers here. So let’s talk."

"Hn. That sniper rifle you’re holding looks like it has a lot to say."

"...Point taken," said Wash, and he set the rifle down carefully on the ledge next to the support pillar. "There. See? I’m not here for you."

"You’re transmitting a signal you knew I would recognize. That suggests I’m exactly what you’re here for."

"I mean I’m not here to apprehend you. Trust me, the UNSC has bigger problems than you right now."

"Then what _do_ you want, Agent Washington?"

Good. That got his attention. Now to coax him out of hiding. "I need information. There was an attack on our base last night. Some Fed soldiers went missing and we need to find them. They don’t want to be found."

He heard a derisive snort at that, a sound that might have been laughter coming from anyone else. "Then I suggest you get a tracking dog."

"I need to find them before Kimball’s army does."

"A _good_ tracking dog."

"Tracking isn’t good enough -- we need to _know_ where they are, and we need to know _yesterday_ . You were with the Feds longer than any of us -- longer than some of _them_ given the high turnover rate you helped establish. We need your help."

"Well, well. This explains the sudden… activity from your base after it was quiet so long." Wash had barely enough time to process that, to realize just how closely under surveillance Locus must have them even now, before the low voice on his radio made a thoughtful sound. "Tell me, Agent Washington: why go to such lengths to find a few defectors? You’ll have your way home soon enough. Leave this planet’s problems to its inhabitants, and get out while you can."

"I can’t," said Wash through gritted teeth. "Tucker’s gone too."

Locus made the sound again, that half-formed laugh, and said, "You mean Captain Tucker is _with_ them. I see. Interesting..."

"I don’t need running commentary," Wash said tersely. "Just directions."

"And if you cooperate, you might get them." A long pause followed that declaration, and then, almost offhandedly: "I’ll think about your proposal."

"We don’t have time for you to think about it. Kimball’s army is already on the move. If they find Tucker first, he’s dead."

"I suggest you sleep, Agent Washington. You’ll need your strength."

The frequency went dead. Out in the darkness of the canyon, a gunshot pierced the tranquility and sent a flock of avian creatures scattering into panicked flight. Wash picked up the rifle, checked the comm tower, and saw the smoking remains of the transmitter. Checked the high slope of the canyon wall where the wildlife had fled, and saw nothing.

He lowered the rifle, and hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

  
  
  
  


It had been a long time already, and still nobody had come for him. Hours, at least, long enough for him to get irritable with hunger and thirst and if someone didn’t let him up to take a piss soon he was not going to be held responsible for his actions. He’d managed to get out of bed with the limited mobility afforded him by the metal cuff on his wrist, but when he’d tried to drag the frame closer to what he suspected to be the washroom, he’d found the entire bed was bolted to the floor. So much for that plan. He’d shouted himself hoarse for a while after that and then given up, and in the time since then he’d laid still on the hard mattress and tried not to consider the possibility that he was alone, that whoever had left him here wasn’t coming back. That could seriously be a prob--

 _\--lem! Each and every one of you is just a_ problem _for me to_ deal with _\--_

Tucker jolted awake at the sound of Church’s voice, his head and shoulders lifting off the mattress before he realized his mistake and sank back down into disappointment.

That happened now, sometimes.

It was never anything useful, of fucking course, just flashes of Church as Tucker remembered him -- yelling, bitching, and otherwise being a huge fucking pain in the ass. Not like he guessed it had been for Wash, no deep, dark secrets about classified military experiments and war crimes. Just one absolute raging dickhole running his raging dickhole mouth, and whenever he heard it his body would tense and this swell of guilt and regret would rush up and crest in his throat until he felt like he was gonna hurl.

He probably should have told Wash about that, in retrospect, and that thought inspired even more shame about the way he’d left things at base. Wash hadn’t spoken to him since the armory. He’d been an asshole to Caboose, called Freckles his “seeing-eye dog” and then didn’t apologize when Caboose’s usually cheery face was uncharacteristically stoic afterward. He’d been decidedly unenthusiastic about Sarge somehow surviving getting shot, and it wasn’t like he’d wanted the stupid old fuck to die or anything like that, but he’d really, _really_ not been in the mood for his boasting about being alive _right_ _after_ they’d just lost--

Tucker’s stomach lurched, and he grit his teeth and swallowed back the bile in his esophagus. He’d fix it. He’d get out of here and make things better with the guys, make things right. And then, if he was extra lucky, maybe when he thought about Church he wouldn’t feel like his brain was unravelling out his ears anymore.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway, _armored_ footsteps, not just someone being careless. They grew louder until they paused outside his door, and he panicked, scrambled to reach the discarded IV needle that rested on the edge of the bed. He managed to disconnect the tube with one hand, and as soon as he tucked the needle between his fingers, he heard the digital chime of a successful unlock code, and the door swished open and glaring light from the hallway flooded his cell.

"It’s about fucking time," he groused. The harsh light stung his eyes and made him wince, but he forced himself to look, to make out the shape of an armed and armored soldier in the doorway.

"Captain Tucker," said the soldier. "Good to see you’re awake. The Major’s asked to see you."

"Look, I’m cool with kinky shit," said Tucker, pointedly rattling the cuff on his right wrist, "but I’m not into dudes, dude."

"Wh-- No, we’re not-- We’re just taking precautions," the soldier squeaked, and Tucker’s fingers slackened around the IV needle. Fuck. This guy couldn’t have been older than Palomo. They weren’t gonna make this easy on him. "You like… lunged at a medic when we were prepping you for evac. Fell off the stretcher and everything. You don’t remember?"

"No, I don’t. Probably because it’s bullshit. And did I just hear you say evac? Where the fuck are we?"

"FAC Outpost 14. Oh, uh, sorry -- Private Vargas, sir," said the soldier as he stood a little straighter, and now that his eyes were adjusting to the glare of the hall light, Tucker could make out his suit of white Fed armor. "There was an attack on the base. Major Miller can fill you in."

"Who the fuck-- you know what, never mind. Just let me up."

"Yes, sir!"

"And I really, really need a bathroom, like _right now_ if you don’t want me pissing all over your boots.”

“Y-yes, sir…”

  
  
  
  


Vargas led him through deserted concrete halls where their steps echoed loud, past loading bays cold enough that his breath hung in the air whenever they left temperature-controlled areas. They had to be in the mountains, he thought, but that didn’t make any sense at all. They didn’t have the resources for that, not nearly enough vehicles or personnel to spread so thin. What the hell kind of evac plan would send them that far out from HQ?

 _Yeah, right. Evac_. 

Even without that little voice at the back of his mind, the one that told him _think, listen, plan_ in that steel-plated manner he associated with Wash-on-a-mission, he could see through that weak-ass excuse. Something had gone wrong, and it was not good news for him.

They soon came to the base’s war room -- the same construction as every other Fed base he’d seen so far, a holographic projector mounted in the center of the room and the walls lined with terminals and screens. Two soldiers were hunched over one of the terminals and murmuring, one in Fed white like Vargas, the other in--

Tucker’s jaw dropped. Holy shit. Holy shit that was _his_ . This cocky son of a bitch was wearing _his goddamn armor_ , the GEN2 suit he’d discarded on the _Staff of Charon_ . Oh, it was fucking _on_.

“Major,” said Vargas. “Captain Tucker, as requested.”

"What the fuck is this?" Tucker demanded. "That’s my armor, asshole!"

The asshole in question calmly turned to face them, and drawled, "Oh, really? That’s too bad. How’d you put it... _‘International Dibs Protocol’_?"

Tucker bit off a scathing retort as he realized belatedly that Wash’s dumb instinct had been _right_. That paranoid little check he’d done outside the privacy curtain to make sure they’d been alone hadn’t been for nothing, and he was never, ever going to give him the satisfaction of admitting that. "So, what,” he shot back, “not enough you steal a guy’s armor, you gotta eavesdrop on his private conversations, too?"

"Please,” scoffed the soldier. “It’s a military base -- there are no private conversations. Least of all in bases that used to be ours."

"All right, so you _are_ Feds. Then what the fuck is going on? Your S &M enthusiast here said we evac’d--" Vargas sputtered at his shoulder "--but that’s obviously not what happened or this place would be swarming with our guys.”

“You’re right. That’s not what happened.”

“Then what the hell? Did you fucking kidnap me?"

"We _saved_ you,” said the soldier in white sitting at the terminal. Sarcastically, she added, “You’re welcome, by the way. A lot of shit just went down back at base -- we got you out safe."

"Oh, I get it," said Tucker, maximum sarcasm applied. "You just so happened to know it was going down _ahead_ of time and rescued _me_ of all people. That’s kidnapping, lady. I’m not a fucking idiot, so cut the bullshit."

"No bullshit," said Asshole Prime. He crossed the room at a casual pace, battle rifle held loosely in front of him, and came to a stop close enough that Tucker could grab it if he wanted -- but Vargas was still at his shoulder and the other Fed was watching from the terminal. Both armed. Not a good idea just yet. "Well, maybe a little bit of bullshit. But not the part about shit going down at the base."

"Talk faster,” Tucker growled. “Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing with my armor?"

"My name is Miller," said the soldier. "My friends and I are Fed loyalists, and this is our headquarters."

Tucker snorted derisively. "Fed loyalists? This oughtta be good. Let me guess -- Mommy Kimball doesn’t love you as much as Daddy Doyle did, so now it’s my problem?"

Miller laughed. "Well, that’s a given. Kimball will look out for her own people first and foremost, we know that much. The rest of us are on our own, I guess.”

“Look,” Tucker sighed, “whatever beef you’ve got with Kimball, it doesn’t matter anymore. The war’s over. The UNSC will be here any day now, and you can all go back to… building elaborate tunnel systems or digging up alien temples or whatever the fuck you used to do here back in the day. Pack it in, dude. It’s done.”

“You know, Captain…” said Miller as he turned away and began pacing a languid circle around the holoprojector. “I heard that recording you managed to broadcast at the communications tower. When you got Felix to confess to everything? That was smart. Brought us together against a common enemy. Even changed quite a few hearts and minds about the rebels. Our noble heroes, swooping down out of legend to rescue and unite us...” He stopped pacing to level a pointed glare at Tucker, and he could feel the heat of it even through his visor. “But the truth is… you’re an outsider. You and your friends don’t have the faintest idea what’s been happening to Chorus, what it was _really_ _like_. Friends, family, comrades… all gone. All wiped out by the New Republic.”

“By Charon,” Tucker corrected him.

“We were duped by Charon, sure. Hargrove was giving the orders, Locus and Felix spurring us on. But it was the New Republic that had its finger on the trigger, and we will never forget that.” Miller gestured to Vargas. “His father served under the last General, the one before Doyle. Sniper got him when they walked into a New Republic assassination attempt.” He nodded toward the soldier seated at the terminal. “Laroche’s whole squad, wiped out by a bombing. She fell behind, caught up to them just in time to watch them all die.”

 _That’s war,_ said a demon he couldn’t exorcise, and he bit his tongue to stay silent. Even now, depriving Felix the satisfaction of getting under his skin came before anything else.

“I lost my brother,” continued Miller. “Shot down in cold blood. And there are dozens more with stories just like ours. The Federal Army kept this planet from utter collapse until Charon and the New Republic came and fucked everything up, and that stability was paid for with _our_ lives. All of us lost something to this war, and asking us to roll over and let Kimball take what we have left is an insult to everyone still standing.”

Tucker sighed. They’d known getting the Feds and rebels to really work together would be difficult, if not impossible to sustain long-term. So good to be proven right. It never got old. “Look,” he said, reaching deep down and dusting off his conciliatory, _stop-what-you’re-doing-you-colossal-fuckup_ diplomatic skills, “that sucks, and I get it. We’ve all lost people. But it kinda sounds like your beef is gonna be with the UNSC. They’re the ones in charge now, not Kimball.”

“She will be soon,” said Laroche. “We’re the ones who _actually_ kept this planet going after they abandoned us here, and now they’re about to crown her supreme ruler without so much as a thought about us.”

“So fucking say something. Squeaky wheels and all that bullshit.”

“They won’t listen to us,” said Miller. “There’s no one left on our side with the authority to negotiate. The only way to make them see reason is to destabilize Kimball’s army. They’ll see she’s not fit for the job and hand it back over to us. So that’s what we did. Some bombs in the motor pool, some dead New Republic soldiers--"

Tucker balked. “You did _what_?”

“Oh, don’t worry, the base is still intact. There aren’t enough of us to take the whole thing, and we don’t want to hurt the Feds still there. We just have to make sure Kimball goes down in flames.”

"You think a shitty failed base raid is gonna convince them to put you in charge? This is the worst fucking plan I’ve ever heard. They won’t care if you blow up a few cars, dude."

"Cars, no," said Miller. "Malcolm Hargrove, on the other hand…”

The threat hung on the air in the ringing silence, and for the first time, Tucker looked at the other man seriously. "Holy shit…” he said, his skin crawling. “What the fuck did you guys do?"

"Nothing. Yet.” Miller raised a gloved finger and pointed it at Tucker. “That’s what we need _you_ for. Our first attempt to get to him failed. The key codes we swiped for the cell block must have been old, and your guys managed to interfere before we could move to Plan B and blow the whole block to pieces. We already had your armor from when we swiped supplies from Hargrove’s ship, and we knew you were no friend of his." Miller shrugged. "We figured you could help."

"Help tank the people who won this fucking war?” Tucker snarled. “Kimball’s my friend."

Miller laughed. "Your friend, huh?"

"Yeah, and she’s gonna have people looking for me, so it’d really be in your best interests to send me on my way."

"Oh, trust me -- she’s looking for you, all right. Laroche?"

She typed something into the terminal keypad, and then the projector in the middle of the room lit up a ghostly blue, showing them a map of the region dotted with several small triangular marks.

“Jeeps,” said Miller, pointing to one cluster of markers at the far corner of the map. “Pelicans… Ground troops over here, some of them going back to your old bases, we think. And those are just the ones we have eyes on. Yep, you certainly are _pret_ -ty popular with the New Republic all of a sudden, Captain.”

Tucker froze when it finally clicked -- the smug fucking tone, the dumb bravado, the need to steal and wear his armor… "You fucking set me up," he said numbly.

"Hey, no hard feelings," said Miller, holding up one hand in a placating gesture even as the other gripped his rifle. "I happen to respect you. Charon would have wiped us out if not for you and your friends. This isn’t personal. We just needed someone to draw off Kimball’s attention for a while, and your armor happened to fall into our lap.”

“They think I _helped_ you.”

“They absolutely do.” Miller nodded to Laroche, who switched off the projection, and then he sauntered toward Tucker again. “Look. Help us kill him, and this will all go away. We’ll vouch for you when the UNSC arrives, Hargrove will be dead, and you can put this planet behind you for good."

"Fuck you," spat Tucker. "I’m not interested."

“Oh. Well… that’s a shame,” said Miller. He reached into the utility pocket of his armor, produced a small scrap of paper -- no, a _photograph_ \-- and held it up for Tucker to see. "But I think we can change your mind."

Tucker couldn’t suppress his reaction, the little forward start he did before he stopped himself, and there was no hope they didn’t know they had him right where they wanted him. "He’s light years away, moron,” he finally managed, forcing his words out through a throat so tight he felt like choking. “You can’t do anything to him from here. God, you _suck_ at this."

" _We_ can’t, true. His pals at the Sangheili embassy though?" Miller clicked his tongue. "One call via the communication temple is all it would take. I bet the aliens would _love_ to know about that suit of armor Kimball’s about to hand over to the UNSC. A secret human weapon, linked to the father of their half-human ambassador? Liabilities like that don’t tend to stick around long.”

Tucker swallowed hard, and said nothing.

Miller tucked the photograph back into the utility pocket. "I’ll make this simple for you, Captain. You’re going to help us kill Malcolm Hargrove, or we’ll frame your son as a spy for the UNSC. Understood?"

"Yeah..." said Tucker hollowly. "I got it.”

And then he dropped the IV needle down into his palm and lunged.

Shouts went up. He grabbed onto the lip of Miller’s chestplate and drew his arm back, preparing to stab the needle just beneath the helmet where it had a chance of piercing his neck. A hand clamped down onto his shoulder from behind and _yanked_ , and he was tossed aside like a ragdoll, hopelessly outmatched against an opponent in power armor. He slammed hard into the base of the projector and collapsed, white-hot spikes of pain lancing through his unprotected ribs. Vargas picked him up by the back of his shirt, and then wrenched his arm around behind his back until he dropped the needle, and shoved him face-first down onto the surface of the projector.

Tucker spit blood against the glass and opened his eyes, breathing hard. Miller hadn’t moved an inch.

“Take him back to his quarters,” Miller said to Vargas. “Let him think it over. Hopefully he’ll have a better answer for us in the morning.”

“Oh, you want a better answer?” Tucker snarled as Vargas dragged him to his feet. “How about ‘ _fuck you for threatening my kid, cockbite_ ’. How’s that?”

“Can someone else _please_ be on prisoner duty next time?” Vargas whined.

“Fuck you too, you kinky fuck. I can’t believe I felt sorry for you.”

“Seriously. This guy is an asshole.”

He kept up a steady stream of profanity as Vargas dragged him bodily out of the war room, and only stopped when the door slid shut behind them. Tucker went cold and quiet, his mind and his heart racing.

He was in some deep fucking shit.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Hey,” said Wash, gently shaking Caboose awake. “Hey, Caboose. Time to get up, buddy. Your turn to be on watch.”

“Mmnnnh,” said Caboose, his voice nearly drowned out by Sarge’s snoring and muffled from lying face-down on the mattress. “Five more minutes.”

“No can do. Your turn to look out for Locus.”

“Nnnghhhhhh…” Caboose rolled onto his side, squinting in the early morning sunlight. He raised an arm, pointed over Wash’s shoulder, and sleepily mumbled, “There he is.”

Wash eyes widened, and he whipped around and drew his pistol.

Locus was above them on the open second level, crouched behind the half-wall railing with his rifle drawn and aimed squarely in their direction -- more specifically, to Wash’s horror, at Sarge, still asleep and completely defenseless. Wash clenched his jaw shut as they stared each other down, his heart pounding, and hoped his prior theory that Locus had no reason to hurt them still held water.

"I expect payment," was all Locus said.

Wash exhaled relief, and lowered his gun slightly. "Of course,” he replied. “The army still has alien tech we can trade you for--"

"I don’t want your refuse,” said Locus evenly. “If I help you, it’s going to be worth my while."

Wash frowned. "We don’t have any money."

“We also don’t have any buried treasure,” Caboose added. “I mean, if you’re still a pirate. ‘Cause if you were you’d probably like that. We have some eye patches, but you should probably leave those for people who need them.”

“Thanks, Caboose,” said Wash to quiet him down. “Like, I said -- we don’t have any money. And I’m sure you know we’re running low on supplies. The tech is all we have.”

"Luckily for me, what I want is more valuable than either.”

“And that would be…?”

Locus finally lowered his rifle. “One: when UNSC transport arrives to take you off this planet, I want passage on your vessel."

"Sure,” said Wash flatly. “Why not. Shouldn’t be too hard to sneak a wanted criminal on board a UNSC ship right under their noses. Is there more?"

"I heard you chattering on your open channel while I was following you here. The Epsilon AI has fragmented.” Locus’s helmet tipped downward. “I want one of the pieces."

“Nope!” said Caboose instantly. “Nope, sorry. Church is not for sale.”

"Never gonna happen,” Wash confirmed. “Even if I could get it, you really expect us to let you loose with one of those things powering your armor? Not a chance."

"That’s my price, Agent Washington."

"It’s too steep."

Locus sighed. "Disappointing. If only there were someone _else_ on Chorus who wanted to find Captain Tucker as badly as you. Do you think they could get me what I want?"

Wash’s fingers clenched around the grip of his pistol. Dammit. _Dammit_. He’d shown their hand too soon, hoping a little sincerity would prove they could be trusted, and it may have just screwed them over.

“Agent Washington,” Caboose hissed when he hesitated too long in his response. “What are you doing? You can’t give him Church!”

“We don’t have a choice,” Wash muttered. “He’ll just go to the army and tip them off about us.” He stood up, made a show of putting away his pistol, and then called up to Locus, “Fine. Deal. Let’s get going.”  
  
“But--!” Caboose whimpered.

“Caboose, it’ll be okay! Go get the jeep ready.”

Caboose’s face pinched up in disappointment and disgust as he got to his feet, grabbed his helmet off the floor, and wordlessly marched outside. The commotion woke Sarge, who sat up with a startled noise and looked around wildly.

“Hurm,” he grunted. “What’d I miss?”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Thick tension marked the return trip from Crash Site Bravo. Wash had taken over driving the jeep to keep them moving on schedule, leaving Caboose free to alternate  between ignoring him and talking loudly to Freckles about how he was ignoring him. The air was awkward enough that Sarge refused to intervene in what he deemed “Blue Team HR issues” and watched their six from the mounted machine gun in silence, ready to fire should their new companion -- travelling alone on a Mongoose about half a click behind -- decide to turn on them.

All things considered -- all things being an angry squadmate, a trigger-happy gunner, and an extortionist mercenary who had very recently tried to kill them as a hired hand -- Wash thought it could have gone a lot worse.

A message appeared in the corner of his HUD and he spared it a glance. Coordinates from Carolina; they must have re-entered transmission range. He sent back an acknowledgement and swerved the jeep off the mud-packed road, into tall grass and toward their new heading, and hoped she’d had better, less complicated luck than him.  
  
  


 

 _They’re in the back of the Pelican on their way up to the_ Staff of Charon _when Tucker starts feeling wrong._

Calm down, _says Church. He doesn’t need to speak out loud anymore when riding shotgun like this, and Tucker will never say so, but he’s really come into his own with all this AI stuff. Even though he’s not implanted directly he can access the neural link between Tucker’s suit and his brain while living in the onboard hardware. Tucker always forgets he never knew a Leonard Church who was human; this is one of the times he remembers._ Stop worrying. You’re freaking me out.

You stop worrying _, Tucker thinks back._ I’m gonna be sick. What’s up with you?

_His question takes Church by surprise and he fails to stop the bleed over, the impressions in his memory that mirror what Tucker’s feeling right now. He sees her on the rooftop of their base inside the memory unit, and then looks away, doesn’t look again because if he does he won’t be able to bring himself to--_

Holy fuck, _Tucker interrupts._ Stop. That’s what I’m talking about.

You’re the one making me think about this shit, asshole, _Church fires back._ You’re distracted -- your head’s back on the ground. What are you so amped up about?

 _Tucker puts a hand to his helmet visor and grimaces_. Nothing. Shut the fuck up, I can’t concentrate.

 _But Church is a nosy prick, so naturally he prods a little, just far enough until he finds that knot of shared distress they can’t unravel. For him it takes the shape of the back of her armor, always just out of arm’s reach, and the three words that destroyed her for good. For Tucker it’s a maelstrom of color and sound -- yellow accents on blue armor where they don’t belong, the roar of the collapsing tunnel, the red leaking through fingers clasped tightly over his abdomen, the constant whispering fear that_ trying _will never be good enough to keep them safe, and if he fucks this up they’re going to die, all of them, the whole planet, but..._

_But Wash said he could do it, and his heart pounds faster when he remembers that, when he thinks that maybe the yellow accents do belong after all._

_Church says nothing. Just pulls back with a tinge of heat that might have been embarrassment._

We’re not gonna make it back _,_ are we, _Tucker thinks soberly._

Of course we will, _says Church._ Don’t be such a fucking baby. We’ll see them again.

 _Tucker flinches_.

Hey. We will. _Church can’t shrug, but the sentiment carries easily between them, connected like this._ Sometimes you just... gotta have faith.

  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

Tucker sat on the edge of the bed in his cell like he had in the back of the Pelican -- hunched over, elbows resting on knees, his hands folded. Thinking.

His cooperation was a foregone conclusion. He could argue and deflect and spit venom all day, and his military career to date stood as evidence of that impressive ability -- but in the end, a choice between his son’s life and some shitbag war criminal’s wasn’t a choice at all. He knew it, and those assholes in the war room knew it, too. Locking him back up in his room had been a formality; he’d already made his decision before Vargas had shut the door and left him here.

He stood slowly. Paced the length of his makeshift cell in restless circles as he tried to concentrate enough to form a plan. Normally this was the kind of shit he was delighted to leave to someone else -- and there was _always_ someone else, a Kimball, a Wash, a Church to come up with plans and make the decisions that would ruin his life, but… Outpost 14. Nestled high in a godforsaken, snow-blasted mountain range. No one would even think to look for him here.

This one was all him. No pressure.

Think think _think_. All right. Fact number one:no matter what happened, Kimball’s army would survive. An embarrassing amount of his time as ambassador had been spent striking out while hitting on hot diplomats, but he’d gleaned enough on the job to know the UNSC would sooner install an entirely new government than give control back to some disgruntled Fed terrorists. Which was tightly tied to fact number two: Miller didn’t seem like an idiot. He _had_ to know that. Did he want Hargrove dead so badly that he just didn’t care? What the fuck was his deal? Being blackmailed into this fucked up plan was bad enough -- even worse that it was doomed to fail. His friends all thought he was a traitor for some fucked up, waste of time power struggle that wasn’t even going to _work_.

His hands curled into tight fists at his sides, and he grounded his spiraling thoughts with the bite of nails on his skin. Fact number three: everyone thought he was a traitor. No -- that was bullshit, scratch it off the list. He was a Captain -- his squad trusted and looked up to him. Carolina was too smart and suspicious of everyone to fall for such a cheap trick; Caboose, too stupid and trusting of him. The Reds were all dumb as rocks, but they’d definitely known him long enough to figure out something wasn’t right. And Wash…

 _You should’ve let me kill him_.

He stopped pacing at one end of the cell when his gut dropped like a stone. Wash. He’d forgotten all that shit he’d said to Wash about Hargrove. Holy fuck, he’d practically _confessed_ before it even happened. Jesus Christ. He wouldn’t believe it, would he? He knew what treason looked like, and he knew Tucker. There was no way...

...But what if he did? And if Wash believed it, what would the others think? He could picture so clearly the disappointment on their faces, and it twisted his stomach to realize they might think of him that way, look at him like he was some kind of-- like he’d stabbed them in the back when he should have been--

_Sometimes you just… gotta have faith._

Tucker flinched and leaned into the wall, pressed his forehead against the cool concrete until Church’s voice receded in the back of his mind.

Fact number four: no one was coming to his rescue this time. Faith would need to wait.  
  
  


 

 

The steep slope of the mountain they’d been skirting for the last hour yawned open in a black fissure that split the rock face and cut below ground. At the place where the waning sunlight cast long shadows into the mouth of the cavern, something shifted as they approached, changing color from the same hue as the sun-baked stone to bright teal as Carolina deactivated her armor’s adaptive camo and stepped forward to greet them.

“Any luck at Bravo?” she asked as Wash clambered out of the jeep.

“I hope so,” he replied, even though whether Locus -- waiting in the mountain pass behind them, well out of Carolina’s IFF range -- would turn out to be what he’d call _luck_ remained to be seen. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out. Tell me you have good news.”

“As good as we’re going to get.” She handed him a small storage chip which he immediately pocketed for safekeeping. “There’s no record of the attack, like we thought. Security data for the last week has all been wiped. Fortunately for us, Lowell talked. She gave up one of the other Feds, swears she didn’t know the others. And considering we managed to pull Dr. Grey out of medical to assist with the interrogation, I’m inclined to believe her.”

“Terrifying. Got a name?”

“Private Daniel Vargas. He was a medical trainee in the infirmary where Tucker was recovering. Security tapes from before the wipe are all we’ve got, but we managed to pull some video of him.” She pointed at the utility pocket where he’d stashed the chip. “That’s everything we could put together in time. I’d start when Tucker was admitted and work forward from there. Kimball’s people are already doing the same, so you’d better hurry.”

“Wait a minute,” he cut in. “Since Tucker was admitted? That’s almost two months ago. How’d you get all this data of just one guy so quickly?”

Carolina shifted her weight to her other hip and folded her arms defensively. “We… had some help,” she admitted. She took a few steps back and motioned him to follow her, and they retreated further into the cavern until they were out of earshot of Sarge and Caboose in the jeep. “We’re keeping it quiet for security, but… We needed to work fast, so we took Grif’s suggestion for FILSS. We woke up Delta and let him go to work.”

Wash gaped at her. “And Kimball okayed that? With the UNSC breathing down her neck?”

“I told you,” Carolina said, a hint of fondness creeping into her voice. “Tucker’s her friend, too. Whatever brings him back in one piece. And it paid off: Delta was able to identify Vargas much more quickly and reliably than we could on our own.”

“So he’s… working?” Wash prodded. “After my armor locked down I wondered if maybe he got damaged…”

“He’s working.” Carolina hesitated. “But… he’s a little strange sometimes. Like the old Delta, and not. He knows all these things Delta shouldn’t, and vice versa.” She snorted, and added wryly, “His mouth’s a little smarter than I remember, too. That part is probably Church. But who knows? This is new ground for all of us.”

Her fond tone had reached saturation, and Wash frowned inside his helmet. Remembered the way she’d fumbled, been just slightly off-kilter in the days after the crash, those first days without him, and worried she was getting her hopes up. Delta wasn’t Epsilon. None of the fragments were Epsilon. They were setting themselves up for disappointment -- Carolina, Caboose, Tucker, Locus -- if they expected anything else. “Would you implant him?” he asked outright.

Carolina peered at him suspiciously. “I don’t think that would be best for anyone,” she said, a warning and an order all in one breath.

“I’m not talking about me,” he clarified hastily.  “I meant you.”

She shook her head. “I doubt it. I wouldn’t be able to keep my memories of Epsilon away from him. Delta doesn’t remember being splintered; I don’t want to introduce anything that might accidentally remind him of that.”

“Yeah,” agreed Wash, and the back of his neck prickled at the reminder of how poorly Epsilon had historically handled that kind of stress. Best not to find out if Delta had inherited that weakness -- both for him and his host. “That’s probably for the best. He deserves a fresh start.”

The jeep horn blared angrily. They exchanged glances and hurried back to the cavern mouth to see Caboose leaning over into the driver’s seat and pointedly not looking at them.

“What’s with him?” Carolina asked, bemused.

“Long story. I’ll catch you up when we get back. We know our next move now -- what’s yours?”

Carolina huffed impatiently. “I’m leading a transport further south into the jungle.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

“I’d _rather_ be back at base. But Kimball thinks we can use Hargrove as bait to draw out the Feds, so that’s my assignment.”

“You’re moving Hargrove?”

“No -- just making it look that way, with Lowell’s help.” She nodded at him. “Clock’s ticking. Let’s hope next time we see each other, you’re dragging Tucker back with you.”

“I will be,” Wash promised. “Whatever it takes.”

Carolina braced herself for a moment in a low stance he recognized from their days with Freelancer, and then activated her speed mod and vanished back into the darkness of the cavern. Wash turned back to the jeep, their newly-acquired evidence sitting heavy in its pouch.

Time to put their hired gun to work.

  
  
  
  


When Tucker gave the Feds his answer, Miller was such a swaggering asshole about it that he almost changed his mind on the spot.

“You’ve made the right choice,” he said, and Tucker could hear the insufferable smirk in his voice under the helmet. He reached into his armor’s utility pouch -- _his_ armor, still -- and withdrew the photograph of Junior. “Here you go. Call it a goodwill token. You’ll get your armor back, too. I’ll send it to your quarters later.”

Tucker snatched the photo from his hand and immediately pocketed it. “I’ll make a better target in my own suit, right? Don’t do me any favors.”

“Ahh, so you’re _not_ an idiot. Good to know.”

He scowled. “Just tell me what to do so I never have to see you assholes again.”

Miller gestured to the war room’s holo projector, once again displaying a map of the region surrounding the United Army HQ, this time with small triangular markers moving away from the static blue square that indicated the base’s location. “Kimball’s forces are on the move,” he said. “We just spoke with our intel in her ranks. They’re moving Hargrove, and one of the Freelancers is with the escort squad.”

Tucker forced himself not to let his dismay show on his face. “Which one?” he asked, as casually as possible.

“Agent Carolina. But Washington fell off our radar yesterday so he could be tagging along. Not that it matters -- my encounters with them were brief so l haven’t really seen what they can do, but I know we don’t want to tangle with either of them.” Miller folded his arms, nodded toward the holomap. “So, what do you think? Decoy, or is that really Hargrove?”

“The fuck should I know?”

“Come on, Captain…” Miller chided him.

Tucker rolled his eyes, and wrestled with his deep resentment of the situation that insisted he give two middle fingers while speaking. “Depends on where Kimball is,” he sighed. “If she’s with the transport, it’s him. If not, she’s got him stuffed into a crate somewhere and she’s sitting on top of it with the key down her bra.”

“My thoughts exactly. Well, not… exactly, that was actually kinda creepy how quickly you came up with that.”

“Yeah, high school sucked.”

Miller walked around the projector and put a hand on his upper back, steering him out of the war room. “Assuming she’s not completely stupid, it’s probably a decoy, so this is what we’ll do. A few of us will go for it, make it look like we took the bait. The rest of us will use teleportation grenades to go back to the base and take out Hargrove. If we can subdue Kimball, even better, but if we have to camp out here and wait for the UNSC to arrive, that’s fine.”

“Hey, whoa -- I’m not gonna kill Kimball,” Tucker warned him. “Hargrove only, and you can go fuck yourself if you’ve got a problem with that.”

Miller shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re the one with a target on your back; you want to leave her alive to come after you, that’s your problem. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about us. If Kimball dies it’ll just look like a coup, and we don’t want that kind of UNSC attention. Hargrove’s our target. We’ll teleport to the base, do the job, and you provide the distraction if we need one.”

“By ‘provide a distraction’, do you mean ‘eat a thousand bullets’?”

“Tucker,” said Miller, his tone too confident, too thick with pride and flattery, and Tucker was reminded so strongly of Felix that he couldn’t help but try to recoil. “We’ve been fighting the New Republic since long before you landed on this rock. We’ll be fine. Besides, Kimball’s spread her forces too thin looking for you. It’s the perfect opportunity to strike. And you’re used to a little risk if it’s for a good cause, aren’t you, war hero?” Miller clapped him on the shoulder with his armored hand, hard enough he could feel the impact vibrate in his sternum. “Trust me. We do this right, and pretty soon Malcolm Hargrove and the New Republic won’t be a problem for anyone anymore.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

A former New Republic scouting outpost at the edge of the jungle served as camp for the night. While Sarge and Caboose cleared out the wildlife that had taken up residence inside, Wash headed for their Warthog, parked a comfortable distance away and partially-obscured beneath a canopy of low-hanging branches sprouting wide leaves. Locus had taken up residence in the passenger seat, evidently aware their arrangement did not mean he was welcome in close quarters with them.

Wash handed him Carolina’s storage chip and his datapad. “All of this video is of Private Daniel Vargas. You know him?”

“I wasn’t paid to socialize with the recruits,” answered Locus, sounding bored.

“With your winning personality? Shocking.” He nodded at the chip in Locus’s hand. “He’s a medic. He would have had access to Tucker before the attack. I want you to analyze all of this, see what kind of patterns you can find. If we’re lucky, maybe there’ll be a clue pointing to where they escaped.”

“If your army is using an AI, I won’t find what you need before they do.”

Wash paused, his fingers tensing around the windshield frame as he realized the implications of that statement. "You’ve been spying on us,” he surmised.

Locus did not look at him. “I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

“Not just back at the cavern. You followed us from the base to Crash Site Bravo.”

"Naturally. UNSC ships would be coming for you sooner or later. It would be my only opportunity to leave."

“And you never miss an opportunity.”

Locus’s helmet tilted slightly in his direction, though Wash couldn’t be sure what he was looking at -- the visorless helmet obscured even the limited body language he was used to reading with the standard issue UNSC suits.

“Look,” Wash sighed, “don’t worry about what Kimball’s people find. Delta will be fast, but he’s limited by Epsilon’s lack of expertise with the Federal Army. That’s where you have the advantage.”

Locus inserted the storage chip into the datapad and turned it on. “I’ll get it done.”

“Keep me posted.”

When Wash turned away to go back to their encampment, Locus said idly, already at work, “Tell me, Agent Washington: why go to such lengths to find a traitor?”

Wash stopped, and turned back around. “Excuse me?”

“I expect sentimentality from you,” Locus continued, “but this is foolish. Let your army do its job. If Captain Tucker has turned against you, he is no longer worth your consideration.”

The offhand accusation stoked those dormant embers of anger Wash kept carefully contained, and he considered for a moment not answering; he owed Locus nothing beyond the price they’d agreed upon. But casting doubt on Tucker -- not the other Feds, _specifically_ Tucker -- after the frustration of the last two days was the final straw, and he couldn’t resist a retort. “You first,” he replied bitterly. “We looked for two weeks and we never found Felix’s body. Know anything about that?”

Locus did not move, the death’s head shape of his helmet half-obscured in the jungle’s shadow.

“I’m guessing in _your_ case it wasn’t sentimentality,” said Wash. “But whatever you want to call it. Closure, maybe, or just covering your tracks. It doesn’t matter. When the ground’s shaking beneath you, it’s instinct to grab onto something, anything, even if it seems foolish.” He turned away again. “Stay out of my business, and I’ll return the favor.”

Locus didn’t stop him from leaving this time.

  
  


 

“...Greaves, chestplate, aaand helmet,” said Vargas, closing the lid on the storage container full of Tucker’s armor he’d brought to his quarters. “That’s all of it. Oh, your pistol’s in there, too. You can take a battle rifle from the armory later.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Tucker asked, and he held his hand out expectantly. Vargas stared at it, hesitated a long moment, and then gave him a tentative handshake. “Oh my god, _no_ , moron. My sword?”

“Oh!” Vargas recoiled in horror at his mistake. “S-Sorry. You can’t have that. Major’s orders.”

“Not part of the deal,” said Tucker. “Tell him to hand it over or it’s going someplace he won’t like.”

“I’m… I’m not telling him that.”

Tucker squinted a little at the nervous squeak in his voice. “Dude. I know it’s been an all hands on deck kind of situation down here for a while, but are you even _old_ enough to be in the military?”

“Wh-What? Of course I am!”

“Barely, I bet.”

“I’m twenty-one…”

Hearing those words spoken in that meek, protesting tone that he had definitely heard before made Tucker freeze up. “Shit,” he said, “I remember you. You were one of the students with Dr. Grey in the infirmary.”

Vargas rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, yeah. That was me. Had to keep an eye on you after they took your armor, make sure we got you out before the shooting started.”

“Christ,” Tucker sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “How many others were there? The Feds who were in on this shit.”

“A few. I don’t know all of them -- most of them, really. I didn’t get out of Armonia much.”

Vargas shrugged sheepishly and bowed his head a little, the red of his visor directed at his feet. God. This shouldn’t be getting to him so badly. Before crashing on Chorus, an army of idiot soldiers eager to throw their lives away on someone else’s stupid crusade would have been nothing more to him than a sign he needed to pack his bags and get at least two planets away. That was a harder line to take now, though, after living and fighting alongside them for months. After distilling the worst years of his life into a slapdash training regimen so these kids could learn how to fight, and maybe how not to die if they were lucky. Now instead of soldiers with death wishes, he looked at them and he just saw himself, fresh out of basic and dropped into that shitty box canyon and making it up as he went along.

Tucker wondered if this was how Wash had felt about him and Caboose.

“Look,” he sighed. “I know you blame the New Republic for what happened to your old man, and yeah, that _sucks_. People die, like, all the time, and it’s stupid. But you’re twenty-one, dude -- you should be getting shitfaced and flunking out of college and knocking up some chick you barely know, not avenging dead people.”

“Jesus,” Vargas wheezed, “what kind of pep talk is this? I can’t believe you have a _kid_.”

“Fucking right I do, and he’s awesome. Also, shut up, I’m not done. My point is that you should be making your own mistakes instead of cleaning up after other people’s. You inherited this stupid war, and so did most of who’s left on the other side, and that’s bullshit, dude. Just put it down.”

Vargas hesitated. “I can’t,” he mumbled.

“Yes you can. Trust me, it’s easy. You need help figuring out how to avoid work? Because I know a guy who--”

“Do you hate Malcolm Hargrove?”

The quip died on Tucker’s tongue. He could feel exhaustion settle into his bones where sheer obstinate bluster had given him strength just seconds before. “...Yeah,” he sighed after a moment. “I do.”

“You hate him because you stood up to him when he came for us, and now someone you cared about is dead.” Vargas levelled him with a placid stare through his visor, his nervous voice now deadened. “And if you’d been better, if you’d been able to stop him sooner, it never would have happened. And now you know he's _right there,_ and you can't do anything about it. That’s how I felt every day after we joined with the New Republic.”

Tucker closed his mouth in a firm line, and said nothing.

“Believe me, if I could put this down, I would,” said Vargas with a helpless half-laugh. “I mean, Christ, _I_ don’t want to fight the Freelancers. Are you kidding me? No way I could keep up with that. One time back at Armonia, Agent Washington showed us how to get a knife under someone’s armor in just the right spots and…” He shuddered. “Yeah. No thanks.”

Tucker frowned. “You saw him fight?”

“Yeah. Locus had Doyle send out these messages to show everyone the badass Freelancer who was gonna turn the tide for us. Morale-boosting stuff. Propaganda, I guess.”

“ _All_ the Feds saw him?”

“Probably,” said Vargas. “Why?”

“Miller said he never…” Tucker stopped short of finishing that thought. It could be nothing. But it was getting harder and harder to ignore his instincts these days. “Never mind,” he said dismissively. Better not voice it to an enemy, at any rate. “Not a big deal.”

“All right…” Vargas nodded toward the crate containing Tucker’s armor. “Anyway, everything you need is in there. We can’t let you have free run of the base, so I’ll be back to get you in the morning.”

“C’mon, dude, you gotta think this is bad news, right?” Tucker insisted. “Kidnapping and keeping people locked up and all this sneaking around stuff doesn’t exactly scream ‘good guys’ to you, does it?”

Vargas paused in the doorway, his shoulders slumped low. “We’ve been at war for a long time, Captain,” he said, words slow and heavy with defeat. “There aren’t any ‘good guys’ anymore.”

He left, and the door slid shut and the lock engaged behind him. Tucker immediately unpacked his armor from the storage crate and laid every piece out on the bed, one by one, and began the long task of inspecting it all to make sure nothing was damaged or sabotaged.

He found the bug in his helmet, ripped it out and whispered ”go fuck yourself” into it as sweetly as he could manage, and crushed it underneath his boot.

  
  
  
  


 

“Boys,” said Sarge gravely, “if this is our last meal together, then let me say it was an honor. You’re the least terrible Blues a man could ask to spend his dying moments with.”

“We’ll be fine, Sarge,” Wash sighed, irritably opening his MRE. “Nobody is going to die.”

“Your courage in the face of an armed and dangerous mercenary standing guard while we sleep is noted, Wash. Mostly as being ill-conceived, and possibly just plain stupid.”

“We have a deal. And it’s the only way he’s getting off this planet, so he’ll behave.”

“I’m glad you brought that up!” said Sarge. “Because I ain’t crazy about letting our new compadre run off with classified military equipment. You been sent to the slammer for that once already, and ain’t no way I’m goin’ with ya.”

“I know.”

“Sure, we’re doin’ it to find your buddy, but that ain’t gonna fly with the higher-ups if we can’t prove he ain’t a traitor.”

“So we’ll have to prove it,” said Wash. “We find Tucker, we get the truth, we help Kimball get to the bottom of this. Locus’s compensation will be a footnote after that.”

“ _If_ we find Tucker.”

“We will,” Wash swore.

Sarge grumbled to himself for a moment as he considered that. “Fine. I got your back, Wash. Just hope you know what you’re doin’...”

"Siiiiiigh…” said Caboose loudly. He did not move from where he lay on the floor with his back turned to them, his MRE sitting next to him untouched.

“Somethin’ you wanna add to the conversation, son?” Sarge grunted. 

Caboose’s shoulders heaved as he sniffed angrily. “Colonel Sergeant, you want to give Church away, too? Well, I am glad I never joined Red Team, because it’s stupid, and you are stupid.”

“Whuh! Why, I oughtta -- I’ll be dead in the ground before I let a Blue talk about my team that way!”

“Enough,” Wash warned them, easing Sarge back down into a seated position with a hand on his forearm. “Caboose, I don’t like this any more than you do, but--”

“Yes you do!” Caboose bellowed. He bolted upright and pounded his fist into the floor so hard the concrete spiderweb-cracked beneath his armored knuckles. “You _hated_ Church, and you are _glad he’s gone_!”

Wash opened his mouth to fire back a retort, and then didn’t when he couldn’t decide whether to disagree. Even Sarge had been cowed into silence by his outburst. And before he could collect himself, Caboose had torn his helmet off, exposing the tight lines of his mouth and the conspicuous shine in his eyes, and he knew he had _really_ screwed up this time.

“But I’m _not_ glad he’s gone,” Caboose choked out. “I’m really, really sad! And Tucker’s really sad too! You may not like him, but Church is our friend, and _you_ promised to give him away. And you didn’t even think about how sad we would be if he wasn’t around anymore!”

“Caboose, I didn’t -- hate him…” he said weakly, trailing off when he didn’t know how to continue. Because Caboose was right: what he or Tucker would want had never occurred to him for a moment. The only problem he had considered with Locus’s demand had been the consequences of losing what was technically still military property.

 _Property_. Like Epsilon hadn’t been a person, with people who loved and hated and weren’t sure how they felt about him at all.

“Agent Washington,” said Caboose, sad and subdued now. “Do you know how I know you didn't like Church? Because he didn’t leave you a message, and you’re not mad about it.”

“You didn’t get a message?” Sarge asked. “Even I got one of those, and he was my arch-nemesis. My opposite number!”

“He didn’t leave one for Carolina either,” Wash reminded them both.

“She punched her door so hard it went across the hall,” said Caboose. “ _You_ don’t even care.”

“We had nothing to say to each other,” Wash insisted, failing to prevent his voice from creeping higher in irritation. Caboose scoffed with impatience and turned his back on them again, sitting cross-legged on the floor and folding in on himself. “Look, it doesn’t _matter_ what we want, Caboose. We have to do this if we want to find Tucker. Epsilon is the best chance we have to--”

“Don’t talk about Church like that,” Caboose snarled.

Wash exhaled sharply and looked to Sarge for help, who simply shrugged uncomfortably and went back to his uneaten MRE. He was mere seconds from taking his depleted patience and leaving, from just giving Caboose some time to cool down and accept that this was happening -- but if he was still this angry a full day later, he wouldn’t come around anytime soon. Putting this off wouldn’t fix anything.

He sat down on the floor next to Caboose, who petulantly shifted ninety degrees away so they were no longer facing the same direction, and drew a deep breath.  “You’re right,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’m not sad he’s gone.”

Sarge made a strangled noise of surprise. Caboose didn’t raise his head.

“I feel bad for you, and for Tucker, and Carolina. I know you all cared about him very much. But the way Epsilon hurt me made it hard for me to be around him. I can’t pretend it wasn’t.”

“Church was mean sometimes,” Caboose allowed in a huff. “But he was still our friend.”

“I know.” He laced his fingers together anxiously as he spoke, struggled to find the right words and the emotional honesty to speak them. There was very little in the universe he wanted to do less than this right now -- but Caboose needed it, and that was enough to spur him on. “I thought maybe with time it’d… get better. That things between us didn’t always have to be bad. But then he left with Carolina, and this whole civil war happened, and… now he’s gone. But that's what _happens_. Sometimes things are left unfinished. That’s why it’s important to do everything you can, while you can -- so you don’t regret not doing more later. I just don’t want us to make that mistake with Tucker.”

Caboose’s head turned slightly as he peeked back at him over his shoulder. “Tucker’s not a computer,” he said matter-of-factly.

“No, I mean, he…” Wash exhaled again, long and slow, and tried to reorient his thinking into something more straightforward that Caboose could follow. The words became lodged in his throat, the ones he’d already used, the ones that usually surfaced on the rare occasions he followed this line of thinking: _he hurt me_. He had. Epsilon’s break would probably stay with him for the rest of his life. But this time when he spoke, what he said instead was, “He was... supposed to be my partner. Like he was with Carolina. He would look out for me, and I thought I was supposed to take care of him, help him realize his potential, to -- to become more than just a piece of someone else. To become a _person_. And he… Church already _was_ a person. And I didn’t treat him that way. And I don’t think he ever forgave me for that.”

As he was speaking, Caboose turned halfway around to face him, his eyes wide and expression soft with a new understanding. “Agent Washington,” he said, awed and gentle, like he was something small and delicate cradled in his hands. “He was supposed to be your best friend.”

Wash blinked in surprise, and then immediately looked down, unable to meet Caboose’s crushingly open and earnest gaze. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s right. He was supposed to be.”

Caboose’s face fell as he turned fully toward him. “I guess it would be tough to not have a best friend and lose a best friend all in the same day,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. That wasn’t nice.”

“No, I deserved it. I didn’t think about you or Tucker. Or Church. I used him, just like the Director would have done. Just like he was probably afraid I’d do.”

“No, Church liked you.”

“Okay, I _know_ he never said that...”

“No,” Caboose agreed. “But in my message he said we could trust you and that when people are shooting at us you would keep us safe. Yeah, and that’s kind of the same thing coming from him.”

Wash couldn’t help a small laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Church likes Tucker for some reason, too. I don’t really know why, but I try to let people make their own mistakes without judging them.” Caboose gave a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t want to give Church to Mr. Locust, but if it helps us find Tucker then... I guess that is what he would want.”

"Thanks, Caboose,” said Wash, patting him on the shoulder. “But one thing at a time. First we find Tucker, then we’ll figure out what comes next.”

Caboose’s lack of enthusiasm for the plan notwithstanding, Wash took it as a good sign that he quietly opened his MRE and began eating instead of ignoring everything and everyone in his vicinity.

Small victories, he supposed.

  
  
  
  


_[Outside]_ , said the message that popped up on his HUD.

Wash scrambled up off the floor where he’d been failing to sleep and headed out into the jungle. In the weak pre-dawn light, he could just barely make out the shape of the Warthog hidden beneath the low tree branches, and inside, a very dim glow that indicated Locus was sitting exactly where he’d left him last night. Whether he hadn’t slept or was just very good at making it seem that way wasn’t immediately clear.

“The sim trooper is insubordinate,” Locus said by way of greeting.

Wash sighed irritably. “That’s what you called me out here for?”

“Make sure he’s not a problem.”

“Relax. He was just blowing off steam. He’s… sensitive when it comes to Epsilon.” When Locus continued to spool through the video feeds on the datapad and said nothing in reply, Wash decided to prod him a little. “What do you even want with him, anyway? What do you want so bad that’s worth the risk of carrying an unstable AI?”

“Stay out of my business,” Locus echoed, “and I’ll return the favor.”

“You made it my business when you chose your reward.”

Locus looked at him calmly, the dim light of the datapad highlighting the sharp edges of his helmet in the dark. “Your reluctance is surprising,” he said. “Given your history with the Epsilon AI, I wouldn’t have expected you to hesitate at the chance to be rid of it.”

Wash’s mouth went dry. He struggled to recall the leaked documents, the Oversight Subcommittee investigations, anything where that might have been mentioned, and came up empty-handed. Epsilon had been a secret kept very, very close to the Director’s chest. “How did you know about that?” he asked finally.

“A mutual acquaintance,” said Locus. “Aiden Price. He’s dead.”

Wash laughed bitterly. “That’s a shame. I would have liked one last session with the Counselor.”

“I assure you,” said Locus, “Price was eager to regale us with cautionary tales about what happened to you, and to Agent Maine. The risk is acceptable. I have... loose ends to tie up. AI assistance will be greatly valuable to me.”

“It wasn’t just me and Maine,” Wash insisted. “These things brought down _all_ of us. The agents, the program, the Director -- everyone who’s ever been in contact with these AI gets screwed over in the end. I’d think twice about lining up if I were you.”

“The risk is acceptable,” repeated Locus.

“The risk is not being in control of yourself anymore.”

“I’m not weak,” he growled, as though it were an argument in full.

“And neither were we,” Wash shot back. “Those things came from the mind of a man who was. I’m trying to tell you not to let _his_ weakness destroy you.”

Locus abruptly turned his helmet back to the datapad, signalling the conversation was over. Wash decided he’d had enough arguing for one night and was about to turn and head back to the outpost, when Locus held up the datapad for him to see. Wash peered closely, and saw the image of a soldier in white Fed armor, zoomed in so his torso fit the entire frame.

“There,” said Locus. He pointed to the back of the soldier’s armor, where a line of small round objects dotted his waist. “Those grenades. This type is particularly useful for triggering controlled avalanches. With Chorus cut off and munitions rationed they were in limited supply, so they’re not standard issue. They’re only used at one base: Outpost 14.”

“That could have been his last posting,” Wash reasoned. “No guarantee that’s where Tucker is.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he picked up the wrong kind of grenade because he’s a medic and doesn’t know any better.” Locus put the datapad away, evidently already having decided his job was done. “Either way, it’s more of a lead than your army has. If Private Vargas has been there, we might find more evidence.”

His heart leapt into his throat but he forced himself not to get his hopes up. It was a long shot -- but more than they had to go on yesterday. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll wake the others. We’ll have to move fast but if we go now we might make it by nightfall.”

For the first time in days, something like hope spread through him, warm and determined.

  
  
  
  
  


Vargas unlocked his door first thing the next morning and gave him breakfast, dry rations and stale water that made him miss the terrible infirmary food he’d been living on for the last several weeks. Then it was on to the armory to get him a rifle, and this time, Tucker noted the presence of more Fed soldiers in the halls than before. The base was still nearly empty in comparison with the United Army HQ, but there was an unmistakable buzz of excitement in the air.

Today was the day, and everyone was anxiously awaiting the outcome.

While Vargas retrieved a rifle for him, Tucker watched a squad of four Feds huddled around a workbench in one corner of the armory. They were arguing amidst a shower of welding sparks, snapping irritably at each other as they tried to figure out what to do next.

They were rushing, Tucker realized. Time was running out.

“Everyone’s a bit on edge,” Vargas said, when he noticed him watching. “We’ve stockpiled all this equipment, but unless we can get it working, it’s useless.”

“Get what working?” Tucker asked.

Vargas motioned toward the workbench. Tucker inched closer, keeping out of range of the heated argument, but close enough that he could make out someone laid out of the surface, a dark grey suit of armor streaked with bright orange--

Tucker recoiled, and reached for his hip on reflex. “What the _shit_ \--”

A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. He whipped his head around to see an unfamiliar soldier in white Fed armor with a green visor.

“Relax,” said Miller’s voice. “It’s empty. The merc’s dead. We found his suit at the bottom of the communication temple when we were scavenging for supplies. Seemed a shame to let it go to waste.”

Tucker breathed out a sigh of relief, angry with himself that even after death Felix could get the better of him. “What are they doing with it?”

“Repairs and augmentation. We found the the light shield with him, but it was heavily damaged, either in the fall or when you killed him. That’s too valuable an asset to just scrap, so they’re trying to get it running by integrating it directly with the armor. Recovery of usable equipment is priority number one. Every piece counts toward our victory.”

Tucker’s stomach soured as he watched them work. _Augmentation_. _Integration_. _Equipment_. Nice sounding words that masked what Tucker knew he was looking at, what he had seen rise up out of the deck in Hargrove’s office. They were turning the armor into another Meta suit. “And what’d you do with the asshole it belonged to?” he asked bitterly.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Miller, and his tone seethed with surprising venom. “He got what was coming to him.”

Under normal circumstances, hearing someone bitch about how much they hated Felix would have made Tucker’s entire fucking week. But as he stared at the empty armor and the Feds working busily, with Miller’s hand weighing heavily on his shoulder, he was preoccupied with hoping that the Feds wouldn't be arguing over what to do with _his_ armor next.

  
  
  
  


“Tracks outside,” Locus reported as he adjusted the sight on his sniper rifle. Below them at the foot of the snowy slope, the doors of Outpost 14 were barely visible in the dark of early nightfall. “Someone has been here recently.”

“Can we get close enough to read them on motion trackers?” Wash asked, eyeing the rocky descent.

“Not without giving away our approach.” Locus shifted the rifle. “There’s a guard on the north tower. Cameras are mounted on the east and west wings.”

“Those crafty devils,” Sarge grumbled. “Hiding out in evil snow fortresses -- come out here and fight us like men!”

“That’s the last thing we want,” Wash snapped at him. To Locus, he said, “Can you get down there camouflaged? If you can incapacitate the guard, I can take out the cameras.”

“They’ll know we’re here when you do,” said Locus, but it wasn’t a complaint -- he was already locking his rifle to the mag strip on his back and blending with the snowy white cliff face. “Move quickly.”

Wash drew his own sniper rifle and settled down in the snow on the spot Locus had vacated. They waited in the cold, watching the tower carefully for several long minutes until the guard dropped seemingly of his own accord, and then he went to work.

  
  
  
  
  


A dozen of them were gathered in the war room studying the floor plans of the United Army HQ when the alarms started blaring.

“What the fuck?” said Miller, frozen with his hand still pointing out the exits.

At her terminal, Laroche hurriedly switched over to the security feeds, flipping through them until she encountered the ones that showed a solid black error screen. “Cameras 4 and 5 are down,” she reported. “Someone’s here.”

Miller hurried to the terminal and leaned in over her shoulder. “ _Shit_. It’s the fucking Freelancer!”

“And he’s not alone. How did they find us so quickly?”

Tucker smiled wide inside his helmet as worried murmurs began to spread through the room. “Wow,” he taunted. “Either he’s really good, or you guys _fucked up_.”

“Shut up,” Miller spat. To the rest of the room, he shouted, “Change of plans! Get your shit together, _now_. We’re moving out.”

“Sir,” said another Fed toward the back of the room, “the armor’s not done and we’re waiting on heavy artillery, we’re not ready to--”

“We don’t have a choice!” Miller snapped. “We’re few enough as it is -- if any more of us get taken out here, we’re done. Grab what you can and meet in the motor pool, now. Tucker, don’t go anywhere, you’re with me.”

The Feds scattered to carry out their leader’s orders, streaming around Tucker who stood rooted to the spot, his heart pounding with pride and renewed confidence. In the flurry of activity, he reached into his utility pouch, removed the photograph of Junior, and dropped it on the floor underneath the holo projector.

With any luck at all, it would be enough.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Ear-splitting alarms blared in the long corridors of Outpost 14, setting Wash’s nerves and teeth on edge as he led Caboose and Sarge deeper into the heart of the base. They advanced in tight formation, rifles raised, steps quick and sure, checking every side room as they marched through with hyper-focused precision. But with each step taken, with every empty room and deserted hallway cleared, the fear that had already taken root in Wash’s heart burrowed itself even deeper.

There was no trace of activity on his motion trackers; the base was empty. They were too late.

They followed a meagre trail of abandoned equipment -- guns, crates, electrical wiring, network cables -- until they came to the base’s war room. Supplementary weapons and ammunition lay scattered near computer terminals here and there. Whoever had been here had left in a hurry.

“Nobody home,” said Caboose mildly. “Well, we did drop by uninvited. That was pretty rude of us.”

“This don’t make a lick of sense,” complained Sarge. “Why would they leave a single guard for an empty base?”

“It wasn’t empty when we got here,” Wash concluded, his voice thick with resignation as he put away his rifle. “They left him behind.”

“Saw us comin’ and scampered. _And_ left a man to fend for himself against the enemy? Those dirty cowards...”

Wash leaned on the edge of the holo projector that occupied the center of the room. Escaped. _Escaped_ , right out from under them. He curled his hand into a tight fist and slammed it down onto the projector’s surface, heard and felt the thick glass _crack_ beneath the force of his fury. “ _Dammit_ ! We were _right_ , we almost _had_ them! Who knows where they are now.”

The silence that followed his outburst only fuelled his disappointment. He could picture Sarge and Caboose looking at each other, trying to figure out who should speak first. “Mayyybeeee they left a note?” Caboose offered after a moment.

Wash closed his eyes and breathed deep for a few seconds to get himself under control, to let the phantom throb at the back of his neck fade away. Anger was familiar, a force of nature he could keep in careful balance, but _frustration_ always took him by surprise with its ferocity, prickled hot around the edges of that dark space in his mind where Epsilon had lived for the briefest of moments. Being close, being _almost_ right, but not being good enough. Letting the answer slip through his fingers. There was little more he hated than that feeling.

It was when he opened his eyes, leaning heavily on the projector with his head bowed low, that he saw the photograph at his feet. Wash dropped to one knee and plucked it from the floor. “Tucker’s photo of Junior,” he said to the room. “He had this with him in the infirmary.”

“He is leaving us a trail!” exclaimed Caboose.

“Or he dropped it like a clumsy idiot,” Sarge grunted.

“No,” said Wash. He could see it so clearly, the expression on Tucker’s face when Wash had handed him the photo after he thought he’d lost it forever, could hear the note of gratitude and relief in his quiet ‘ _Thanks’_. “He meant to do it. He wouldn’t have left this behind if it wasn’t important.”

Caboose sighed, long and reluctant. “I _guess_ that is pretty smart for Tucker.”

A flicker of movement at the edge of his vision startled him into drawing his rifle, and caused Sarge to do the same a half-second behind him. Caboose, in complete disinterest, wandered over to the nearest computer terminal. The flicker in the war room doorway solidified, and Locus became visible as he deactivated his camo. In his right hand he held a small, glowing object: a teleportation grenade.

“Where did you get that?” Wash asked, lowering his rifle once more.

Locus tossed the grenade to Sarge with an underhand throw. “The guard carried it. I seem to have prevented him from leaving.”

“They saw us coming and escaped,” said Wash. “It means we’re on the right track, but it won't do us any good if we can’t figure out where they went, and fast.”

“I can see my house from here!” Caboose exclaimed.

Wash glanced at Caboose, who was gleefully pressing various buttons on the terminal he’d singled out. On the monitor was a camera feed of the exterior of United Army HQ, and as Caboose hit numerous keys, the feeds cycled through the base’s interior locations as well.

“Yipes,” said Sarge. “They’ve been keepin’ a close eye on us.”

“If the Federal Army soldiers aren’t at your base right now, they will be soon,” Locus surmised. “You should report to your general and prepare a defense.”

Wash didn’t voice any opposition to the _you_ in that sentence, and if given the chance, would have suggested it himself: if they were going back to HQ, Locus couldn’t come with them and risk being seen. He looked down at the photo in his hand, and knew they had followed Tucker’s trail as far as it would take them.

“We’re out of options,” said Wash. “Let’s go warn Kimball the Feds are on the move. Locus, is the guard alive?”

To Wash’s genuine surprise, Locus nodded once. “When he wakes up, he’ll talk.”

“Good. Use the comm tower here to contact me if you find out anything useful. I’ll come get you when we’re clear.”

“Don’t die,” said Locus. “We have an agreement.”

“I’ll try my very best.” To Sarge and Caboose, Wash nodded and ordered, “Let’s go.”

They crowded together, he and Caboose flanking Sarge so they would be in range of the grenade, and on Wash’s signal, Sarge threw it down. The room curled in on itself in a sickening spiral, and then blinked out.

  
  
  
  
  


The world burst back into existence around them with searing flares of orange and white light and a twist in his stomach. Tucker put his hands on his knees until the nausea and vertigo that accompanied travel by teleportation grenade wore off, and swore to himself that when all this was over, he was _never_ going near one of those things again.

The Fed loyalists who had fled the base stood clustered and arguing amongst themselves. Tucker looked first to them, and then to their new surroundings, and realized he knew the concrete corridors where they’d ended up: the long underground roadways that criss-crossed Fed territory, dotted with control rooms that housed power generators, HVAC units, and maintenance consoles for the more vulnerable structures above ground. Directional signage stenciled onto one wall in white paint confirmed his suspicions: they were underneath HQ.

Laroche’s voice cut through the crowd’s murmurs of shock and discontent, as she shoved her way past her fellow soldiers to get right in Miller’s face. “What the hell was _that_?!” she demanded. “You said there was no way they’d find us that quickly.”

“I don’t know,” said Miller, with false, practiced patience. “We stripped the place clean. Their surveillance isn’t _that_ good.”

“No way they tracked us down so fast by accident. They fucking knew where to find us.”

“Well, _clearly_ we didn’t cover our tracks well enough.”

“ _Or_ ,” said Laroche, low and vicious, “we have a fucking rat.”

They exchanged long glares in the ringing silence as the rest of their comrades glanced nervously at each other, unsure how to react to that accusation. Tucker tensed involuntarily, his finger inching toward the trigger of his rifle in response to the argument. But the mounting tension snapped too abruptly for him to act -- Miller turned and seized Vargas by the throat and shoved him back, until he was pinned between hundreds of pounds of power armor and the concrete wall. Tucker raised his rifle with a startled curse, his sights trained on Miller’s helmet, and the Feds turned their guns on him in response.

“Wh- what--” Vargas choked. He dropped his rifle so he could scrabble to pry off Miller’s hands, locked in a vicegrip around his neck. “It wasn’t me--!”

“Bullshit,” Miller snarled. “You worked with them. You were the only one exposed too long. They figured you out somehow.”

“Put the gun down, Captain,” Laroche warned Tucker.

“Fuck you, tell him to back off,” Tucker countered.

Vargas gasped, a wet gurgle of a sound, sucking air through the straw of his constricted throat. “I swear, it wasn’t--”

“Then you’re telling me it was Lowell?” Miller growled. “You’re gonna throw her under the bus just like that?”

“Ask-- ask her!”

Laroche raised two fingers to the side of her helmet and turned away from the scene, likely to do just that. Tucker took the opportunity to shove his way in between the two Feds, forcing Miller back and breaking his grip. Vargas sank to his knees behind him with a desperate, shuddering gasp. “Jesus, get a grip!” shouted Tucker.  “We don’t have time for this. United Army soldiers are gonna be up our ass any second if we don’t move.”

Miller glared back at him, fists closed and chest heaving, and Tucker steeled himself for a fight he would probably lose. But, thankfully, Laroche tapped Miller on the shoulder at that moment, distracting him and probably sparing Tucker an asskicking.

“I can’t raise Lowell,” she said. “It’s _possible_ she was compromised.”

Miller scoffed. “Then she’s on her own. We have our objective. Squad Alpha, you’re with me. Bravo, head south and take the next entry point.”

Half the Feds hurriedly turned and left on Miller’s orders, and Vargas struggled to stand, presumably to go with them. Tucker held out a hand for him to take and helped him to his feet.

“Not you,” Miller growled, and Vargas wilted under his withering gaze. He detached the plasma sword at his hip, and held it up in front of Tucker, just out of easy reach. “I have a special task for you, Captain. It’s time to prove your worth to us. Head east from here and you can get underneath the detention block. The blueprints loaded into your helmet will help you navigate the tunnels. Cut your way into Hargrove’s cell and kill him.”

Tucker clenched his jaw. “Alone?” he asked. “What about you?”

“We’ll blend in with the Fed soldiers here and draw the guards away to make sure you aren’t discovered. When you’re done, meet us at the rendezvous and we’ll be on our way.” Miller pointed the sword hilt at Vargas. “You go with him. Make sure he follows through, and we’ll overlook your mistake.”

“Sir, I swear I didn’t--” But the dangerous downward tilt of Miller’s helmet squashed his meagre protest. “...Yes, sir.”

“Good. Remember, Captain,” said Miller, holding the hilt out for Tucker to take, “bring me Hargrove’s head, and both you and your son walk away from all of this.”

“Yeah, asshole, I got it,” Tucker grumbled. He snatched the hilt of his sword with barely-restrained contempt and secured it to his hip before Miller could change his mind. “C’mon, kid, keep up.”

Slinking away under Miller’s watchful eye, Vargas didn’t wait to be told again.

  
  
  
  
  


They used the blueprints of the base to navigate the subterranean roads and find their way to the cell block. White outlines of ventilation ducts in the ceilings were tagged on his HUD, and further ahead, a red block that marked Hargrove’s cell. Tucker led the way, stride powered with grim determination; Vargas trailed after him, quiet, hunched, and anxious.

“We’re too far underground,” said Tucker when they drew close to the detention area. “How are we supposed to cut up into the cell block?”

“There’s a ladder leading up to a maintenance hatch,” said Vargas, and as he spoke he marked it for them on their HUDs in bright green. “It goes up to the ground level and passes right by the cells. There’s probably a way through from there.”

“Huh. Good eye,” said Tucker. And then he frowned, because the way Vargas’s head and shoulders perked up at that minor compliment was _beyond_ sad. “Y’know, you don’t actually seem like that much of a fuckup. Why’s Miller got it out for you so bad?”

Vargas exhaled heavily and shrugged. “I’m a private, and a medic. Getting shoved around by superiors is par for the course.”

“Man, that’s bullshit. I’d have team-killed him after a week if I was on his squad. Was he always like that?”

“Dunno. Like I said, I didn’t get out of Armonia much. I pretty much only knew Lowell -- we served together under Doyle. She brought me on board when she joined up with the Loyalists.” He scoffed. “Guess seniority doesn’t mean much in this unit though. She’s ‘on her own’ now, apparently...”

“Look, don’t worry about it,” said Tucker. “Shit’s beyond fucked up, but Kimball’s not about to start killing prisoners. Your friend’s gonna be fine.”

Vargas chose not to respond to his platitudes, and instead pointed out the next right turn at the upcoming intersection. “Here. Second door on the left. It’s probably locked, but...”

“Hah, but nothing.” Tucker took the sword hilt from his hip and activated it with a showy flourish. “I’ve been fuckin’ waiting for this.”

Predictably, the door offered little resistance against a plasma sword. They advanced into the tiny room beyond it, into the white noise drone of machinery and the red glare of emergency lights. Rusty pipes and air ducts climbed up through grates overhead, and at the back of the room by the ancient-looking consoles, a ladder just wide enough for a technician to move unobstructed stretched up through a gap in the ceiling. Tucker looked up: fifty feet above them, the outline of Hargrove’s cell flared red across his HUD.

"The ventilation runs through this wall and across the top of the cells,” said Tucker, pointing it out as he spoke. “If I can get in there I can cut down into Hargrove’s cell from above.”

“Can we fit?” asked Vargas doubtfully.

“Oh-ho, don’t worry, I’ve got _plenty_ of experience fitting into tight places. Bow chicka bow wow.” When Vargas’s only reaction was a turn of his helmet and a flat stare, Tucker cleared his throat. “Forget it. Just -- stay here, I’ll go take a look.”

He scaled the ladder, past the red indicator on his HUD, and then when he’d climbed high enough to be horizontal with the vents, turned to face the wall of the maintenance shaft about two feet behind him. He placed the hilt of his sword flat against the concrete and activated it, felt the satisfying thrum of energy run up his arm as the pale blue-white glow lit up the narrow space and the blade melted through the solid barrier. He cleared away the concrete and then cut a hole into the duct behind it, just large enough for him to fit through. When he was done, he peeked inside to check it out -- not a lot of space. He was compact enough that he could probably manage in his undersuit, but Vargas was both taller and broader than him -- totally out of the question. He withdrew and slid back down to the bottom of the ladder.

“You’re too big to fit,” he reported, and began stripping off his helmet and armor. “I’ll go. Stay here and guard the door.”

“What?” Vargas choked. “No way, if Miller finds out I let you out of my sight--”

“ _Relax_ , kid, Jesus. It’s a fucking cell block. Where the fuck am I gonna go? Out the front door to chow down on a bullet buffet?”

“Okay, _okay_. Just… hurry up.”

With his armor shed, Tucker put the hilt of his sword between his teeth and hurried back up the ladder. He pulled himself up into the duct, able to move silently in only his undersuit, and crawled nearly all the way to the end. A vent in the floor of the duct offered visibility into the cell below -- and there he was. Hargrove, reclining on the bunk attached to the wall. Tucker waited with his breath held until he was sure he heard nothing but the air circulating through the ventilation system, then put the hilt of his sword flat against the seam of the vent and turned it on.

Hargrove made a sharp noise of surprise below him as the blade of the sword shot through the vent and ceiling. Chunks of concrete and metal rained down on him, causing him to jump up and leave the bed vacated to catch most of the debris and dampen its noise. When he was done cutting through, he deactivated his sword and dropped down through the opening.

“Not the most elegant of entrances,” Hargrove sniffed, folding his arms languidly. “But I suppose it’ll do.”

Tucker stood and faced him, at last -- the asshole who’d killed Church, as far as he was concerned, the genocidal warmonger who had tried to wipe out an entire planet for personal gain. Church, Doyle, Rogers, Cunningham, countless others he’d never known. The shambling corpse of the Meta, reanimated in that war machine armor. The ghost of Project Freelancer, unable to rest while this vulture picked clean its carcass. And here he was, like all his darkest impulses had desired since that day: a weapon in his hand and Hargrove unarmed, alone with him in a locked room and every reason in the universe to take the opportunity for righteous vengeance.

Hargrove’s eyes narrowed when Tucker didn’t move or respond to his comment.  “Wait,” he said, eyes travelling to the deactivated sword hilt in his hand. “Who are you?”

“Your worst nightmare, asshole,” Tucker snarled, and he punctuated this announcement with a flare of his sword, drawing deep satisfaction from the look of horror drawing across Hargrove’s face. “Who were you expecting?”

Hargrove backed away, instinctive self-preservation driving him into the farthest corner of the cell as Tucker advanced on him. “The simulation trooper? No, no, you should be _dead_. This is not supposed to--”

Tucker lunged and grabbed a fistful of his grey prison uniform, shoving him up against the wall and driving the breath out of his lungs. “Shut. Your. Mouth,” he said lowly, every word forced through clenched teeth. “I didn’t come here to listen to you talk.”

“Wh-Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll--”

Tucker deactivated his sword again and drew back, throwing all his weight into a devastating punch to Hargrove’s solar plexus and wishing dearly he’d been wearing armor when he finally, _finally_ got to do that. He supposed he’d have to be satisfied with Hargrove dropping like a sack of bricks with a pained, winded noise.

“You don’t get to negotiate, you cueball prick,” snarled Tucker. “Now get the fuck up. We’re leaving.”

  
  
  
  
  


“What,” said Vargas in flat disbelief when Tucker came back down the ladder with an unexpected tagalong. “No. No no no, what is he doing here? Are you insane?”

“Calm down, kid, I’m just-- _hey_ .” Tucker raised a hand defensively when Vargas squared up and aimed his rifle at his head, and he instinctively moved to cover Hargrove, still descending the ladder behind him. _Shit_. When he’d thought about this he hadn’t taken into account being stripped down to his undersuit, his armor laying in a heap across the room. Bad plan. Bad, bad plan. “Put the gun down. I can explain.”

“God dammit, Miller was right,” spat Vargas. “He said you’d turn on us before this was over, he fucking _knew_ you would.”

“Oh, he knew, did he? That why he sent _you_ along instead of coming himself? What did he think would happen to you when I was done with Hargrove?”

Vargas shook his head and took a step back to keep a safe distance between them. Tucker pressed on, fuelled by the adrenaline of staring down a rifle barrel.

“Vargas, listen to me -- Miller is a _total douchebag_ . And don’t get me wrong, so’s this sack of shit here, but I am _so fucking over_ being used as a pawn for someone else’s obsessions, dude. And you should be, too.”

“Put the sword down, Captain,” Vargas ordered, a waver in his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then _don’t_ , moron. I’ll get you to Kimball, we’ll find your friend. This doesn’t have to--”

“Major,” barked Vargas into his radio. “The Captain’s--”

With a frustrated curse, Tucker lit up his sword and sliced the barrel of the rifle clean through, and then used the threat of the blade to force Vargas back, step after step. Vargas threw down his useless weapon and reached for the combat knife strapped to his thigh, and Tucker’s brain lit up with panic -- _Agent Washington showed us how to get a knife under someone’s armor in just the right spots and_ \--

Behind him, Hargrove seized the moment of confusion and bolted. Vargas turned and sliced at him, missing by an inch but causing Hargrove to stop long enough for Tucker to grab him by the sleeve and bash him in the back of his head with the hilt of his sword. He dropped, and didn’t get back up. Tucker had the barest second to pull back far enough to miss the upward slash that followed. He ducked, dodged, took every advantage of his smaller frame out of armor as Vargas tried to pin him down, and when the knife came at him in a vicious overhand stab, he blocked Vargas’s forearm with his own, and swung wide. The heavy hilt of his sword connected solidly with the side of Vargas’s helmet and sent him staggering sideways. A second hit knocked him sprawling to the ground, unmoving. Tucker exhaled, shaking, and dropped to one knee beside him to get his helmet off so he couldn’t continue to radio for help.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, tossing the helmet safely out of reach. “This is for your own--”

Vargas’s arm snapped up and back toward him, lightning quick, and Tucker felt the knife go in. Cold metal plunged into the warm flesh of his left side and _dragged_ , tearing him open along his flank, and Tucker screamed and cursed and used his wounded rage to fuel one last punch to the temple that finally knocked Vargas out. He sagged down onto his forearms and knees next to the unconscious Fed, curled around his wounded midsection and hissing through clenched teeth against the pain.

“Fuck,” he gasped, forehead against the ground, sweat and salt stinging his eyes so bad he had to shut them. “Fuck... fuck, _fuck_ …!”

It was bad, he knew it was bad -- he didn’t even have to pull his hand away from the wound to know that. Blood already leaked between his fingers and he watched it, upside-down, as it spattered one drop at a time on the dirty concrete. “Fuck...!” he swore again, and pounded his fist against the ground helplessly. Stupid mistake. Sloppy. Getting carved up because of _Hargrove_ , of _all fucking people_...

His vision blurred, going dark and spotty around the edges. Armor. Armor, he needed to get back in his armor. The wound was too deep for the medical suite to patch up but it would at least provide painkillers, get him up and moving and out of here before--

The alarms blared, loud and echoing overhead, and his heart pounded faster. Too late. It was over. They were already found out.

He dragged himself up to his knees with tremendous effort, and made the mistake of looking down. Blood soaked the front of his undersuit, stained the ground beneath him, and the sight made him lightheaded. He wouldn’t make it down the hall if he didn’t stop the bleeding. They were going to find his corpse among traitors and criminals, and they’d never fucking know what happened. He’d never get to tell them the truth and they’d think he put everyone at risk to get a chance to kill Hargrove. No one would visit his grave except to spit on it. Junior would never know. Wash would never _know_...

_Don’t be such a fucking baby. It’s not over yet._

He groped around blindly for his sword hilt, turned it on as soon as his fingers closed around it. Step one: accomplished. Step two: try not to pass out on it and cut himself in half. Struggling with that step, he tried to still his heaving breaths as he brought the blade to his midsection, hesitated at the last inch when he could feel the searing heat of the plasma blade against his skin through the tear in his suit. He winced in awful expectation. Blood soaked down the thigh of his suit and pooled under his knee. And before he could lose his nerve, he touched the blade to his wound and screamed as it cauterized, once, then again when it didn’t close all the way the first time, the sharp, acrid stench of burning flesh and plasma filling his nostrils.

Suddenly he was laying on his good side, eyes cracked open the barest amount and something deep in his gut urging him to get back up. He must have passed out. His sword lay inert next to him and the mind-numbing sting of his self-inflicted burn throbbed in time with his frantic heartbeat. The alarms were still going. And through them, there was another sound, one that resonated with that gut feeling telling him he needed to get up, to _move_ \--

“...read? Tucker, come in…”

He craned his neck to look around. Hargrove and Vargas still lay nearby, unconscious. The voice wasn’t coming from them -- it was coming from his helmet.

It was Wash.

He choked back a pained groan as he rolled over onto his knees and crawled the last few feet to the pile of his armor, his wounded left side singing with protest. He grabbed his helmet and jammed it on in time to hear, “Tucker, we’re in range, what’s your status? Tucker?”

“Fucked up…” croaked Tucker. “But I’m here.”

Wash exhaled into his radio, the heaviest, most ragged sigh of relief Tucker had ever heard. “Thank _god_ , we’ve been looking _everywhere._ Are you okay? You sound hurt.”

“Got stabbed…” And then Wash _lost_ it, and started babbling a frantic stream of high-pitched questions he could barely keep track of, and his mind wandered. The alarms were all he could hear now. They were going to find him down here, find him with Hargrove and a Fed soldier, and he had to tell Wash-- he had to make sure he _knew_ \--  “It wasn’t… it wasn’t me, dude, I didn’t… Those Fed pricks had me--”

“Tucker, it’s all right,” said Wash, forcibly calm again in the face of Tucker’s panic. “It’s okay. I know.”

His throat closed up. Tucker put his head down again, suddenly unable to hold it up anymore with the rush of relief that spread through him and weakened his entire body. _He knew._ Of course Wash had never doubted him. Of fucking course.

“Listen, you aren’t safe. The base knows you’re here, they’re fortifying the prison block right now. They’ll be looking for you. Give me your location and we’ll come get you.”

“No, you gotta help Kimball. Tell her… Tell her Hargrove is safe but the Feds are coming her way.”

“I will,” promised Wash, “but we’re still coming to get you.”

Tucker groaned, furious he had to fight _this_ battle, too, on top of everything else. “Fuck, you are _so_ \--” he started, but couldn’t finish. He was so tired. At this rate they’d either find him, or find his corpse, and he might as well keep living after making it this fucking far, he supposed. “...I’m in the tunnels under the base.”

“What’s your position?”

“Hah, well... hard to say. Normally I’m... partial to cowgirl, but you seem like a missionary kind of guy so--”

“ _Tucker_ …”

He laughed weakly into his headset, floating and lightheaded. He never thought he’d miss that note of irritation so goddamn much. “I set my tracker.”

“I see it,” said Wash. “Sit tight. We’re coming for you.”

The promise brought him so much relief he couldn’t even turn it into a joke. Fucking weak.

  
  
  
  


He heard them coming before he saw them, footsteps loud and urgent. And when they appeared in the ruined doorway and saw him, he raised his arm weakly in what started as a wave and then turned into some needy, embarrassing reach-out bullshit. They ran to him, the idiots, they actually _ran_ , Sarge watching their backs in the hall, Wash out front, and Caboose elbowing them both out of the way and shouting his name like a goddamn moron, probably giving them away to anyone in a mile-wide radius. When he reached him, Caboose dropped to his knees and threw an arm around his neck, twisting him into an alarmingly tight headlock. “Caboose,” he choked, “what the fuck--”

“We went on a road trip to find you!” Caboose hollered. “I got to drive for a while! Don’t ever do that again!”

“Ow, _ow_ , holy shit, dumbass, it wasn’t my fault, let me go--”

“Caboose, that’s enough -- he’s hurt,” Wash chided, but Tucker could hear the grin behind his helmet when he spoke. Tucker wiggled out of Caboose’s chokehold and shoved him back, giving Wash room to kneel down in front of him and place a light, cautious hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Christ. Tucker didn’t know what to say to that. He nearly snapped that he pretty obviously _wasn’t_ , having just been stabbed _again,_ thanks -- but Wash’s gaze was fixed on him through his visor and the raw anxiety in his voice was unlike anything he’d ever heard from him before. So he just nodded, because despite the throbbing agony racing up and down the left side of his body, it was true: his team had come for him, and he was finally the most okay he’d been in days.

Wash shook his head. “What the hell happened?”

“They had me in that base you guys raided,” said Tucker. “Fed loyalists. Their leader stole my armor and fucking… threatened to go after Junior if I didn’t act as bait or whatever. They want to kill Hargrove to like, prove to the UNSC that Kimball can’t lead. Have them put the Feds back in power.”

“Where is he now? The leader?”

“Miller’s his name. He’s somewhere in the base. He told me to take care of Hargrove so I just… dragged that asshole along with me so they couldn’t get to him.”

“Quick thinking,” Wash praised, and Tucker’s heart swelled with pride. God damn right it had been. “I’ll radio Kimball and let her know. Don’t worry, she’s the one who authorized us to look for you. We’ll catch this Miller guy and sort it out with the UNSC when we’re done.”

Tucker exhaled, releasing in a single breath all of the tension that had built up over the last few days. It was finally fucking over. He wasn’t alone in this anymore -- he was back with his team and they believed him, believed _in_ him. And now that he was with them, listening to Caboose’s inane chatter and Wash’s calm concern and Sarge’s -- what the fuck was Sarge doing here? -- Sarge’s gruff commands to his own team over his helmet radio, he had no idea how he could have feared that they wouldn’t.

“Christ, that looks bad,” said Wash, when he had managed to pull Tucker’s hand away from his wounded side. “Let’s get your armor back on to stabilize it. I’ll take you to the lab, you can use the healing unit to finish the job.”

“Fucking dandy.”

Sarge gestured to the unconscious forms of Hargrove and Vargas with his shotgun. “What about them?”

“Take them with us,” said Tucker. He paused long enough to allow Wash to slip his armor chest piece over his head. “Have Kimball put them somewhere safe. We need to keep Hargrove alive. The kid can identify Miller if we catch him.”

“Look at you, thinking ahead,” said Wash, amused.

“I’ve had nothing _but_ time to think, dude…”

Wash helped him get the rest of his armor on, and when the last piece fastened, the suit automatically detected his wound and shot him with a dose of painkillers and applied a cooling, antibiotic gel to the burned surface of his skin, inducing a sense of euphoria from the sheer relief of the mind-numbing agony in his side.

“Holy fuck… that feels so much better,” he groaned.

“It’s only temporary,” said Wash. “C’mon, let’s get you to the healing unit. Can you stand?”

He could, with a little assistance, and he adapted to the numbed ache in his side quickly enough that after a few steps he didn’t need to lean on Wash’s shoulder anymore. Sarge picked up Vargas in a fireman’s carry and led the way back through the tunnels, followed by Caboose with Hargrove carelessly slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Oh, hang on…”  said Wash, and he stopped walking behind the others so he could reach into his armor’s side pouch. He produced a photograph, and handed it to Tucker. “I think you dropped this.”

Tucker took it from him. “You really didn’t think I did it,” he murmured, and maybe it was the blood loss, or the drugs making him high as a kite to numb the searing pain of his wound -- whatever the reason, the enormity of that realization suddenly hit him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. “You came looking for me.”

Wash shrugged a shoulder awkwardly, the smallest _what else did you expect?_ gesture possible, and Tucker’s heart leapt into his throat.

"Take off your helmet," he said, thickly.

Wash’s head cocked in curiosity, but Tucker was already removing his own helmet and something in his tone must have told him now was not the time to fuck around because he went along without complaint. And when he was done, when his pale, exhausted face with all those stupid freckles and old scars and that permanently downturned mouth was finally visible, Tucker reached up, put a hand on the back of his neck, and pulled him in.

Wash jerked back instantly.  "Whoa, what the hell?! What are you doing?"

"Trying to _kiss_ you, dumbass, hold still."

"That’s not funny."

"Dude, do I fucking seem like I’m trying to be funny?"

Wash stared at him blankly, eyes tired and brows pinched together in bewilderment -- and then his face slowly reddened as it dawned on him, the way it had in the infirmary, the way Tucker had imagined it might under any number of interesting circumstances after seeing it that first time. (Hey, six weeks had been a long time to spend in a hospital bed by himself.) "...You’re serious," he said at last, voice strained with disbelief.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Seriously starting to regret ever thinking you were kind of cool, yeah. And don’t even pretend like you’re not hot for me, dude, I can see that shit a mile away."

"This is -- not the time," said Wash, jamming his helmet back on. "We’ve got bigger problems right now."

"Oh my god. Whatever you say, Captain Hardass." But before he pulled on his own helmet, he leaned forward the last few inches and pressed his lips to the front of Wash’s visor. "To be continued."

He could swear the scarlet flush across Wash’s nose was visible right through his helmet.

  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

When they made it above ground and into the United Army base, Wash scouted ahead to clear a path for them to the R&D labs, finding clear hallways and places for them to duck into cover while guards hurried by to respond to the intruder alarms. When they made it safely, he ushered them inside and locked the door behind them as Caboose and Sarge deposited their charges on the floor and Tucker limped his way to a wheeled desk chair.

“Simmons says the base is on lockdown,” Sarge reported, as he lowered his hand from the side of his helmet. “No enemy combatants yet.”

“Miller said they were gonna draw guards away from the detention block,” said Tucker. “What’s taking them so long -- are they crawling there?”

“Biding their time,” said Wash. He went to the wall-mounted storage units and keyed a code into the holographic terminal, and a safe box slid out of the wall like a morgue slab. He pulled a small green cylinder out of it: the healing unit that had been taken from the Meta’s armor, that Tucker had given to Wash to save his life aboard the _Staff of Charon_. "Here,” he said, passing it to Tucker. “Take this. As badass as cauterizing your own stab wound is, I’d rather you not die of some stupid infection.”

“Lame,” Tucker complained, but he attached the unit to his armor nonetheless. “This is totally cramping my one-man-army style.”

“Kimball,” said Wash into his radio. “We’ve got him. Standing by for orders.”

Tucker leaned back in his chair and tried to relax, letting the soothing, healing pulse of the Freelancer medical equipment ease the aching discomfort in his side. As he sat there, a soft green light appeared on top of the desk he was sitting at, projecting the tiny image of a soldier holding a pistol next to the computer monitor there.

“Captain Tucker, bio comms indicate your wound is quite deep,” said Delta. “Can I be of assistance?”

“The fuck?” Tucker asked, drawing back in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I am currently residing in this laboratory’s closed network until such time as I can be properly integrated with a combat unit.”

“Delta helped us find you by pulling video logs of Private Vargas,” explained Wash. “That’s how we were able to track you down.” To Delta, he asked, “How bad does it look? We need to be able to move soon.”

“He will need medical attention at your earliest convenience, but his injury is non-life threatening now that exsanguination is no longer a risk. With permission, I can board Tucker’s suit and help optimize recovery time.”

“Yes, please,” said Tucker, and he reached for the storage chip plugged into the computer next to him.

“No need for that,” said Delta, and his tiny avatar winked out. When he reappeared, he was hovering above Tucker’s right shoulder. “I can move freely between connected devices within range of this network. It is what I believe you would call, ‘fucking awesome’.”

“Just like Church!” Caboose exclaimed. “He can move around _and_ he has a potty mouth.”

“Long as he didn’t pass down that whole ghost possession thing…” grunted Sarge.

“To my knowledge, I possess no such ability.” Delta’s image flickered briefly, the way Epsilon’s used to when he concentrated and his systems were taxed. When he stabilized, he continued. “I would not be worried about Tucker. He is surprisingly resilient. He once sustained severe wounds from an enemy rocket launcher; it is unlikely such a small injury will prevent him from returning to duty.”

“A rocket launcher?” Wash asked him, incredulous. “Seriously, you guys were _training_ outposts. How did things manage to escalate that far?”

But Tucker ignored him completely, his attention focused solely on Delta. “What the fuck, dude? How did you know about that?”

Delta paused. “I do not understand the question.”

“The rocket launcher thing. That was ages ago. How’d you know about that?”

“I remember it,” said Delta. “I was present.”

“What, dude, no you weren’t. You were born like less than two months ago.”

“...Oh,” said Delta. His projection swayed and flickered again. “Apologies. I get confused, sometimes. I am… very tired.”

“Ugh, such bullshit,” Tucker grumbled. “Thanks, Caboose. Of all the dumb shit we did, you had to tell Church the fucking rocket launcher story? You couldn’t leave that one out?”

“It was a really good story,” said Caboose. “I liked the part where you blew up.”

“Wait a sec,” said Wash. “Delta, I thought you didn’t know anything about Epsilon? It sounds like you inherited some of his memories.”

“I do not know,” said Delta. “Allow me to examine my data banks.” After another brief flicker, he continued. “Analysis complete. I have identified several other anomalies in my programming that are incongruent with my recent creation. I remember Agent Texas entering the memory unit. I remember seeing her ship exploding above Blood Gulch. I remember hurting Agent Washington in my confusion. Apologies: Epsilon’s confusion. But I do not know how I came to be in possession of these memories. They are difficult to tell apart from my own processes. Analysis suggests they did come from Epsilon”

“Sounds like what he did to me,” said Wash. “And what Alpha did to the fragments: casting off memories as he unravelled. Shedding everything painful to ease his own suffering.”

“Yes,” said Delta. “I believe Epsilon cast off some unpleasant memories upon his self-destruction. In simpler terms: his life flashed before his eyes.”

“Maybe that’s why you weren’t affected as badly as I was,” said Wash to Tucker. “If Delta got some of his memories, the others might have too. Maybe the fragments absorbed a lot of the psychological damage.”

Tucker did not respond, distracted by whispers and faint thoughts in the back of his mind, and that intermingled sense of guilt and despair that had dogged him ever since the crash. _We’ll see them again_ and _You’ve always been my problem_. Unpleasant memories for both of them, now his alone to carry.

When Delta flickered once again, longer this time, Wash made a disapproving noise. “Remembering Epsilon seems to be straining you,” he said. “Focus on healing Tucker for now.”

“Of course,” said Delta, and his image became clear once more. “My apologies. Tucker is currently healing 7.3% faster than he would be without my assistance. You are welcome, by the way.”

“God,” Tucker sighed. “Could you not have inherited that shitty attitude problem?”

“To what attitude problem are you referring?” asked Delta mildly.

“All right,” said Wash, shutting down the argument before it began in earnest. “Focus. We need to get Hargrove and the Fed soldier out of here and away from danger. Any suggestions?”

“Let’s steal a car,” said Caboose instantly.

Wash shook his head. “The motor pool’s on the other side of the compound, and if these Fed Loyalists are smart then they’re probably watching it. We’ll never get him close enough.”

“Then let’s steal a ship.”

“Same problem, idiot,” said Tucker. “We need a plan that doesn’t involve stealing from the military, cause that’s kinda only gonna make things worse. Think of something other than Grand Theft Nautical.”

“Well I can’t help it,” Caboose sniffed. “Stealing things is in my pirate blood.”

“Caboose, I know you’re too dumb to really understand this, but just because you have an eyepatch now doesn’t mean you’re a--”

The word clicked into place in his head, the missing piece to fill the oddly-shaped gap in the puzzle.

“He’s a pirate,” he said numbly.

“Thank you for accepting me as I am,” said Caboose.

“Not you, moron -- _Miller_ !” He turned to Wash. “He’s not a _Fed_ , he’s a fucking _space pirate_!”

Wash frowned. “What? Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“Remember that merc Dr. Grey fucked up? The one that followed us back from Crash Site Alpha. His name was Miller, too!”

“Zachary Miller,” Wash confirmed.

“Can’t be the same guy,” said Sarge. “Those alien plasma rifles turned him into a heaping pile of ash.”

“No no no, not like that. He mentioned a brother, someone who got shot. That must have been Zachary. That’s why Vargas doesn’t fucking know anything about him -- he was never a Fed, he was working for Hargrove!”

“But why would he send you to _kill_ Hargrove if he’s working for him?” asked Wash.

In the corner of the room where Hargrove and Vargas had been set down in the relative cover of a row of desks, the man in question began to stir.

Tucker stood from his chair and curled his hands into tight fists. “Let’s find out.”

They used zip ties from the lab equipment to fasten Hargrove’s wrists to the desk leg behind him, and watched him come back to full consciousness. Wash, Sarge, and Caboose stood back with their guns drawn, while Tucker knelt down to Hargrove’s level and tapped the side of his face.

“Hey, asshole,” said Tucker. “Time to wake up. We got some questions for you.”

Hargrove groaned and rolled his head on his shoulders; Tucker could see the bruise across the back of his head where he’d struck him, and tried not to feel _too_ good about it. “The soldiers of Project Freelancer,” Hargrove sneered. “What is it _you_ want?”

“Now, now, don’t get snippy,” Sarge warned. “I got a shotgun here that is _pretty skilled_ at negotiating if you know what I mean.”

“You don’t intimidate me,” said Hargrove calmly. “Kimball will never allow you to harm me as long as I am in her care.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what we want to talk about,” said Tucker. “Because you definitely thought _I_ was going to kill you back in your cell, didn’t you? You sure as fuck seemed intimidated then. Why is that, I wonder?” When Hargrove didn’t reply, Tucker pressed on, tapping him in the center of his chest with the deactivated sword hilt. “It’s because you were expecting _someone_ to bust you out of your cell, but it sure as fuck wasn’t supposed to be someone who wanted you dead.”

Hargrove glared at him. “What is it you want?” he asked again.

“Miller. He’s here in the base. He works for you, doesn’t he? Him and his brother.”

Hargrove groaned. “Ah yes. His _brother_ . An unfortunate casualty of your attempted raid on Crash Site Alpha. I offered him proper compensation, but he… _disliked_ that I continued to employ the mercenaries responsible for killing him.”

“So he _does_ work for you,” said Wash. “There was never any Fed Loyalist group at all, was there? The attack on the base was on your orders.”

“Yes, of course,” sighed Hargrove, with a roll of his eyes and an insufferably condescending air. “Miller and his compatriots headed up my security team on the _Staff of Charon_ . In case of my capture, they were to free me and ruin the prospects of this disgusting little colony -- and your beloved General -- by any means necessary. They infiltrated your forces after the crash, and found an army with _many_ dissatisfied soldiers quite willing to turn against the leader of a rebel faction that had destroyed their lives. But until he reached them, no, there was no such thing as a Fed Loyalist.”

“You son of a bitch. They fucking lost people in this war that you encouraged, and you used their grief to turn them into footsoldiers? That’s fucking low,” growled Tucker. “So _enlighten_ me -- why single me out?”

“ _Your_ involvement was not something I specified in particular; a useful bit of improvisation on Miller’s part.” Hargrove’s face darkened. “But if you’re going to ask me why he sent you to _kill_ me, your guess is as good as mine. He resented our operation for his brother’s fate, but he understood the risks.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” said Wash, “and say he thinks the chances of you staying out of prison long enough to pay him aren’t very high.”

“Yeah, but why kill him?” asked Tucker. “Why reduce that chance to zero?”

“Because Hargrove wasn’t the only thing he was supposed to rescue, I’m guessing,” said Wash. “And if you’re not getting paid, you do what any disgruntled employee would do -- go after your employer’s assets. Am I right?”

Hargrove’s smug expression froze into an icy glare, and he said nothing.

“What is it?” Wash asked. “Your money? FILSS? The Epsilon fragments? What did you order him to recover? Because whatever it is, he’s here to take it all for himself, and he doesn’t need you to get it anymore.”

Tucker froze. He could picture it so clearly all of a sudden -- Felix’s armor laid out on the workbench in pieces, Miller’s hand on his shoulder as he explained _that’s too valuable an asset to just scrap_ and _recovery is priority number one_. “The armor,” said Tucker as the answer dawned on him. “He wants the Meta’s armor.”

“ _Shit_ . Is that true?” Wash demanded. “Because if that’s what he’s here for, we need to know _now_ , or you’re going up in flames with the rest of us.”

“Yes, _bravo_ ,” sighed Hargrove. “You discovered my secret with your _astounding_ deductive reasoning. Yes, I tasked him with retrieving my _substantial investment_ , and yes, that is very likely the prize for which he tried to trade my life. Are you quite satisfied?”

“And you don’t seem at all concerned about this.”

Hargrove smirked. “Why should I? You’re going to stop him, aren’t you? We can’t risk anything happening to such a valuable asset for the UNSC.”

“Watch him,” Wash snapped to Sarge, and he stalked off to the other side of the room, fingers raised to the side of his helmet. “Kimball, come in. Get soldiers to the armory right away. The Feds are after the Meta’s armor. Keep them out as long as you can, I’m on my--”

“General Kimball.”

All of them looked up; the voice had come from the corner of the room, over the monitor used for emergency broadcasts that hung suspended from the ceiling. On the screen, a row of New Republic soldiers knelt on the floor -- hands behind their heads, and a Fed soldier with a gun standing behind each of them.

Tucker’s stomach sank. The video was a live feed captured by helmet camera; the name ‘Palomo’ was printed neatly in the top right corner of the feed.

“You have precisely ten minutes from the time of this broadcast to come to the armory,” said Miller, standing in the center of the row of space pirates behind their captives. “Your cooperation is requested in our mission. In ten minutes we will begin executing our hostages -- we will find some other way to get what we want, and their blood will be on your hands. Ten minutes, General.”

The feed cut out.

“I don’t like him,” said Caboose quietly.

“Yeah, no kidding,” muttered Tucker. He exchanged looks with Wash, who held his gaze only a moment before turning away and trying to hail Kimball again. He clenched his hands tightly, and remained very quiet as the idea took shape in his mind.

 _That is an interesting plan_ , said Delta, fluttering on the edge of his consciousness as he ran the healing unit. _The others may not like it._

 _Could it work?_ Tucker asked back.

_Yes. If we can get into the armory, I calculate an 89% chance of success._

_Then let’s do it._

“Guys,” said Tucker aloud as Delta appeared over his shoulder. “We have a plan.”


	8. Chapter 8

_ _

_"Church has something to say to you.”_

_Tucker’s sitting up in his infirmary bed, spoonful of flavorless mush halfway to his mouth when he pauses. Caboose sits in the chair next to him, ramrod straight, one hand clenched tightly atop his knee and the other holding out a datapad. He’s not cleared to be back in armor yet and his good eye is cast downward, half-hidden below a curtain of unruly dark curls. The other one’s gone. Tucker doesn’t know why; he wasn’t there when it happened. He should probably ask, but Caboose is trying to hand him that datapad and he_ knows _what’s on it, and the anger burns too bright to see past it, to care about anything else._

_He lowers the spoon back to his bowl, and says, “Fuck him.”_

_“Hey chicka bum--”_

_“Shut up, Caboose.”_

_His mouth tightens into a firm line and he looks up at last, provoked into engaging. “Stop being mean,” he chides. “Church wants to talk to you. It’s important. You should listen when someone--”_

_“I don’t give a shit. He’s gone. It doesn’t matter anymore.”_

_“No, see, he’s_ not _gone!” insists Caboose with dumb, hushed awe, like this is the part that makes everything about this whole fucked up situation okay. “Because there are still the smaller Churches, and also he’s on this video, so when we want to see him we can just--”_

 _“Jesus Christ, would you_ shut up _!” Tucker shouts, and Caboose flinches back, alarmed. “He’s not some broken machine you can put back together. This isn’t like your stupid fucking -- seeing-eye dog pet gun, okay? He’s_ gone _, Caboose, and he’s not coming back.”_

 _The shattered look that crosses his face triggers something in him: a spike of guilt that pulses hotter than it normally does after venting his rage on the nearest bystander, and for a second, he’s afraid Caboose will leave. Just like last time, when he was screaming at them in the Reds’ holo projection room underneath their base, when they were wearing helmets but he_ knew _they were looking at him, wounded, just like Caboose is now, and Tucker turned his back on him and--_

_He shakes his head to clear it. What the fuck?_

_“Tucker,” says Caboose, pulling him back to himself. “Church told me not to let you boss me around so much, so I am going to pretend you didn’t tell me to shut up just now. Church took the time to leave us all messages, so I think you need to stop saying mean things, and listen to what he has to say.”_

_Tucker swallows thickly, and whispers, “Go the fuck away.”_

_Caboose’s face is marred by an awful blend of teary devastation and fury. He stands with so much force the chair legs scrape the floor with a high-pitched screech, and he throws back the privacy curtain when he makes his exit, leaving it hanging open in a gesture he probably considers incomparably rude._

_Tucker drops his spoon into his bowl, and his head into his hands._

Fuck him, _he thinks, with the heels of his palms driven into his eye sockets until lights flash in the dark._ Fuck him. He doesn’t get to say he’s sorry now _._

_But as he lays in bed for the next few days, recovering from the wounds from which Church couldn’t spare him, he thinks about Caboose when his mind wanders. He wonders, if Church left messages for them before he died, where his would be. And the next time Palomo comes to visit, Tucker is ready to get out of this bed and find out._

  
  
  
  


Delta had the foresight to start a countdown on his HUD. Nine minutes left. Tucker watched the seconds tick by, each one punctuated by a stab of agony in his injured side as he drew and released another breath. Delta reacted to his pain by intensifying the flow of analgesics to his system so he could concentrate -- a welcome intervention, if a little too slow for his liking.

“Okay,” said Tucker when the buffer of pain relief widened enough for him to think. “Here’s the deal: we can’t let Kimball open the vault. The pirates came here with teleportation grenades, so if that door opens, they’re gonna grab the armor and disappear. And if they get their hands on even a _piece_ it, we’re gonna be chasing them down all over again a year from now when they’ve sold it to the highest bidder and have it reverse-engineered.”

“She might have to open it,” countered Wash. “They’re going to start killing hostages. She doesn’t have room to negotiate. We need to get inside with her and stop them before they grab the armor.”

“No, _we_ don’t,” Tucker corrected him. “Just me and Delta.”

“No can do, buckeroo,” said Sarge. “We just travelled all over hell’s half acre to find you. We’re not gonna send you in to fight a band of space pirates all by yourself.”

“Apologies, but that is not accurate,” said Delta. “Tucker will not be by himself. We have allies inside the armory.”

“Yeah, and they got guns to their noggins. ‘Fraid they ain’t gonna be much help, Fee Verte.”

“He means the fragments,” said Tucker. “They’re still inside the Meta’s armor.”

“Correct,” said Delta. “Like this lab, the armory is also on its own closed network. If I am brought within range of it, I can use it to communicate with the suit, and with the other Epsilon fragments.”

Caboose gasped in delight. “And then they can _activate the armor_! And pilot it out like a giant robot and fight all the pirates!” When no one responded, he looked at each of them in turn. “Well, I think it’s a neat idea. Maybe you’re not picturing it right.”

“That is not possible,” said Delta. “According to internal communications, the M374 Hephaestus armor has sustained massive damage. Its components are salvageable, but it can no longer be run as a unit. Also: that idea is stupid.”

“Ahh, it’s okay, I just like to feel like I am contributing.”

“Delta,” said Wash, “what are you suggesting?”

“If I make contact with the other fragments, we can overload the suit and irreparably damage its components, rendering it useless to the pirates.”

From the corner of the lab where he was still zip-tied to a desk leg, Hargrove made an agonized noise of protest. “You can’t do that! If that suit is worth a small fortune to Charon Industries, it’s worth even more to the UNSC. I daresay they’ll punish Kimball _severely_ if one of her soldiers willfully destroys military property.”

“Yeah, cool story, bro,” said Tucker. “Besides -- _I’m_ not one of Kimball’s soldiers.”

“Hrrm…” grumbled Sarge. “Much as I hate to admit it, Rich Uncle Pennybags over there’s got a point. Somethin’ tells me the UNSC won’t be happy about us makin’ a mess out of a weapon as dangerous as that.”

“Happy, no,” said Wash slowly. “But technically, that’s the protocol for experimental UNSC equipment: if we can’t recover it, we destroy it to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.”

Tucker pointed at him and nodded. “Exactly. We’re following protocol, so the military will just have to suck my balls if they’ve got a problem with that.”

“We’ll think of a more diplomatic way to phrase it, but -- yes, essentially.”

“You’re making a mistake!” cried Hargrove. “All of that valuable research and materials and you would--”

“Nine minutes remaining,” said Delta. “I suggest we hurry.”

Tucker glanced at his HUD; the clock had restarted. Before he could voice his concern, however, Delta sensed his unease and the timer corrected itself before his eyes.

“Apologies: seven minutes. Running the healing unit is introducing errors in my systems. I will reallocate resources accordingly, but we should hurry.”

“Wait -- waaaait a minute,” said Caboose, staring intently at Delta’s tiny avatar. “Does anyone else remember when Agent Washington used the Temp thingy to beat the Meta and then Church died again?”

“One moment.” Delta’s image flickered blue for an instant, and then back to green, and Tucker felt the healing unit ramp down substantially during the disturbance. “Yes, I do. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I mean… This isn’t like that kind of plan, is it…?”

Delta’s avatar blinked out of sight, only to reappear closer to Caboose, who cupped his hand around him in a protective gesture seemingly without thinking. “If you are concerned about my safety, please do not be. When the armor has been destroyed, I will escape back onto the network where I will await retrieval. But whether I can save the other fragments will depend on whether they inherited the ability to move as freely as I can. If not, they may not survive the process.”

“So…” said Caboose, morosely. “It _is_ that kind of plan.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

Caboose stared at the hologram atop his palm for another moment. Tucker already knew this risk -- it had passed between himself and Delta instantly when the plan had first formed in his thoughts. But Delta seemed confident enough in its outcome for both of them, and so he said, “Caboose, there’s no time. Church knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah… I know,” sighed Caboose. “That is kind of what I’m afraid of.”

Delta waited until Caboose let his hand fall away, breaking his protective cradle of his own volition, before blinking back to Tucker’s shoulder.

“I’ll take Delta into the armory,” said Tucker. “Miller’s expecting me to come back after killing Hargrove; if I play dumb I might buy him some time. Stay out of sight. And if you hear shooting, for the love of god, please come rescue me. Okay?”

He looked to Wash for confirmation and saw his head turned away, his shoulders hiked up and tense. From his posture, Tucker would have thought his mind was wandering, if not for how utterly uncharacteristic that would be. “Wash,” he called out. “You listening?”

Wash snapped back to attention. “Huh? Oh -- yeah.” Tucker cocked his head in a little _what the fuck_ gesture, but Wash ignored him, choosing not to acknowledge whatever that disturbance had been about. “Don’t worry. We’ll be outside as backup if you need us. Signal if you need a distraction. This is the best chance we’ve got, so let’s do what we can. Priority is getting the hostages out alive.”

“I’ll call my boys here,” said Sarge. “Wash, you tell Kimball what’s goin’ on.”

“Five minutes,” said Delta.

The timer on his HUD read 04:41. Tucker fought down the surge of apprehension that threatened his resolve, and said nothing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Kimball’s on her way,” said Wash in his ear as he approached the armory. “How’s it look?”

Tucker eyed the entrance. The heavy doors were shut, and from the arc of the scrape marks on the floor, it looked as though those crates lining the exterior walls had been hastily moved. Sure enough, when he peeked behind them, he saw flashing lights hidden in the shadows. “They’ve got explosive charges behind the crates outside the doors,” he reported. “To deal with anyone who comes knocking that isn’t Kimball, I’m guessing.”

“Got it. We’ll deal with them. Be careful.”

“You too.” He took a deep breath, switched his radio frequency over to Miller’s, and said, “Hey. Asshole. I’m done with Hargrove. Let me in.”

His announcement was met with silence for several nerve-wracking seconds. But then the doors slid apart, just wide enough to admit him, and two armed guards motioned him inside. He marched into the armory, projecting confidence he didn’t feel and clenching his teeth at the way his straight-backed posture tore at his wound. Toward the back of the room, the half-dozen New Republic soldiers who’d been on armory duty when the pirates had stormed it were on their knees, hands positioned behind their heads and relieved of their weapons, with the guns of their captors trained on them -- including Palomo, Tucker saw, whose gaze was locked on him as he approached. Set into the wall beyond them was the armory vault, a huge blast door sealed with an array of biometric security measures. Tucker did his best not to appear too fixated on it.

Miller was there too, seated atop an equipment crate with his pistol dangling carelessly from his hand and watching him very closely. Tucker berated himself for not seeing something was off about him sooner: he didn’t carry himself at all like the Feds Doyle had trained, all insufferable bravado instead of insufferable moral authority.

The armory doors slid shut behind him with a deafening clang, and then they were sealed inside.

 _Make it quick,_ _Church_ , said Tucker, and Delta replied, _Acknowledged_.

He could feel the moment when Delta leapt from his suit to the armory network, his absence marked by a heightening of pain in his scorched flank as the healing unit’s effectiveness dropped off. He winced behind his visor, but did not let his discomfort show in his body language; a wound would help sell his story, but visible weakness would invite the pirates to tear him apart.

“Welcome back, Captain,” said Miller. His helmet tilted just slightly as he made a show of searching beyond Tucker, and then he noted, dryly, “Aren’t you missing someone?”

In response, Tucker lifted his left arm away from his body, far enough to show off the tear in his undersuit and the angry burn underneath, exposed skin and armor still caked with his own dried blood. “Turns out your kid Vargas liked to play with knives,” he said. “Looks like you were right about him.”

Miller’s reaction was inscrutable, hidden as it was behind his helmet. Tucker swallowed hard and eyed the short distance between them and the vault, wondered suddenly if it was soundproof or if Delta’s tampering would give them away. After a moment, Miller sighed and shook his head. “I knew Vargas was trouble. Lowell insisted on bringing him on, but I never trusted him. That’s what I get for ignoring my gut, I guess. Is he dead?”

“Yeah,” Tucker lied. “I left him with Hargrove. By the time Kimball’s men find them we’ll be gone.”

“Which should be any moment now, unless she’s as abysmal a leader as we always thought.”

From the far end of the line of captive New Republic soldiers, Palomo called out, “General Kimball is a _great_ leader. You know she is, Captain,  why are you doing this?!”

“Pipe down,” the pirate at his back growled.

“This is a joke, right?!” said Palomo, and the desperate crack in his voice wrenched Tucker’s stomach. “You can’t really be helping them!”

“Hey, I said shut up!”

Tucker shut his eyes and tried not to flinch when the pirate’s rifle connected with the back of Palomo’s skull with a sickening _crack_ . He opened them slowly, relieved to see him sprawled on the floor but still _moving_ , if whimpering and dazed. The pirate seized him by the back of his armor and hauled him onto his knees again, and Tucker did not move.

“H-How could you…” Palomo sputtered, and behind him the pirate gripped his rifle, and raised it to take aim.

“ _Palomo!_ ” snapped Tucker, sharp and urgent. “Shut the _fuck up_ if you don’t wanna die.”

Palomo let out a huge, gulping sob into his radio, and Tucker’s eyes flicked to the pirate, who wasn’t backing off. He was gonna have to blow this whole charade to keep Palomo’s head attached to his shoulders. With a frustrated curse, he dropped his hand to the sword hilt at his hip.

"I’m here,” said Kimball just then over their open channel. “Open up.”

Palomo was forgotten in an instant as everyone in the room looked to the armory doors. The two guards posted at the entrance opened them for Kimball the same way they’d done for Tucker: barely at all, allowing her just enough space to enter while ensuring grenades or sniper rounds would have to go through her to get inside. Miller hopped down off his crate and stood tall as the guards first shut the doors, then confiscated Kimball’s weapons and marched her through the armory toward him.

The slight relief of pain in his side alerted him to Delta’s return.

 _The vault is shielded from external signal access,_ Delta reported. _There is no way in remotely. I will need to physically enter it to reach the suit._

 _Of fucking course_ , Tucker thought back. _This was way too easy. All right -- hop to Kimball and tell her to go along with them. I’ll call Wash for a distraction and we’ll make a run for it when the vault opens._

 _Acknowledged_ , said Delta, and then he was gone.

“General,” said Miller in a mockery of warm greeting. “We meet at last. I hate to make extravagant demands of new friends so soon, but would you be so kind as to open this vault? Your recruits seem very brave and loyal -- best not to disappoint them.”

Tucker had to give credit to Kimball and her composure: despite knowing Delta had jumped to her armor already, it had been undetectable in her body language. “No harm comes to them,” she said, steel in her voice. “Take what you’re looking for, and go. But leave the recruits alive.”

“Fair trade,” said Miller. “We’re not really the bad guys, after all. Open that vault, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Wash,” Tucker whisperer into his comms, “Delta can’t get into the vault. Kimball’s about to open it and I need to get him in there. You got that distraction handy?”

“Uhh…” Wash replied, a hiss in his ear.“Probably a bigger one than you wanted. But yeah: any second now.”

Tucker frowned instead of risking a response. What was that supposed to mean? He looked over to the holographic vault controls, where the guards had pulled Kimball and removed her helmet and gauntlets to allow the biometric scanners to work properly -- and then he saw something. A shimmer of motion beyond them, climbing up the pile of crates Miller had abandoned and up onto the grated catwalk suspended from the ceiling. But when he tried to focus on it he couldn’t _see_ anything, as though it wasn’t there at all...

“I hope you know what you’re doing Captain,” said Kimball stiffly, drawing Tucker’s eyes back to her. In that moment, Delta returned to his armor, directed his waning strength to its legs to amp up his speed for the dash he would have to make. “Make sure this is worth it.”

“No need to be a sore loser, General,” Miller chastised her. “Captain Tucker just joined the winning side. Now: open it.”

A gunshot rang out, and Miller staggered. Tucker started, wide-eyed -- was he dead? -- but the bullet had glanced off his shoulder guard. The pirates holding the New Republic soldiers at gunpoint raised their rifles in alarm, and their prisoners cringed, preparing for the worst.

“What the _fuck_!” screamed Miller when he’d recovered. “Who the fuck did that?! Come out, or your friends are fucking dead!”

There was movement above them; up on the catwalk suspended high above the armory floor, something moved, shimmered, and came into full view as the soldier’s camo fell away.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Tucker swore, reaching automatically for his sword.

“You…” hissed Miller. “ _You_.”

Locus’s response was to raise his sniper rifle and fire on the crowd gathered near the vault door, forcing the pirates to scatter and the New Republic captives to dive behind the nearest crates for cover. Tucker did the same, rolling out of sight behind a nearby shelving unit. When he was safe, he hissed into his radio, “Wash! Fucking _Locus_ is here, _what the fuck?!”_

“That’s your distraction! Get going!”

“Your motherfucking distraction is _Locus?!_ ”

“Keep those doors shut! He _does not leave this room!_ ” Miller was shouting. “That son of a bitch is _mine_.”

Tucker peered between the shelves and watched as Locus engaged his camo again, saw the shimmer of movement as he retreated down the catwalk amid a hail of bullets. Miller was after him like a shot, pistol in hand, and the pirates were providing a constant stream of suppressing fire to keep their quarry pinned down. Tucker spotted Kimball then, crouched down with the recruits and making sure they kept their heads covered, and he realized this was his opening.

He kept low and crawled around the far end of the shelves until he was close enough to Kimball that he could signal her. She nodded, and with the pirates’ attention drawn away, hurried to the vault doors and began the security clearance process.

There was no hiding the noise of the heavy doors opening. As soon as they started to move, he bolted, tossing his rifle to Kimball so she could defend herself, and amid the shouting and gunfire, he dove into the vault before the pirates realized what was happening.

"How long do you need?” asked Kimball.

 _Five minutes_ , said Delta.

“Five minutes,” Tucker relayed to her. “Don’t open this door until then, no matter--”

A spray of bullets hit the wall beside his head and he fell back into the vault as he recoiled. Kimball turned and shot the advancing pirate dead with Tucker’s rifle, and then activated the door controls again, and a thousand pounds of thick steel slammed down as the hydraulic blast door closed between them.

“Kimball!” Tucker shouted, pounding on the door with all of his strength. “ _Kimball_!!”

The room was sealed tight. The rush of battle outside was reduced to a dull roar and his comms had abruptly cut to static as soon as the door had shut. He pressed his ear to the metal to try and listen for some sign of what was happening, but could hear only his own frantic breath.

 _Tucker, there is no time_ , said Delta. _We must hurry._

Tucker whirled around. At the back of the vault, the Meta’s armor hung mounted on a frame, its stark white surface charred black around the panels where internal circuitry had fried. He approached it cautiously, as though the spectre that had once possessed it would strike out at him if he came too close. He ran a hand over the scorch marked chest piece and up to the helmet. The domed faceplate had shattered in the grenade blast, leaving an intricate network of white spiderwebbed cracks across its surface, and he recalled the way he’d thrown himself down to cover Wash before their armor had locked. Wash’s armor must have protected him, too; it was a miracle his head hadn’t been blown off.

“I will attempt to make contact with the other fragments,” said Delta, appearing next to the empty helmet. “Stand by.”

His image flickered out. Tucker waited, holding his breath to slow the pounding of his heart. His entire body sang with tension as he waited, and waited, but nearly a full minute had passed and Delta wasn’t coming back.

“Delta,” said Tucker, his voice scraping the inside of his throat raw. “Church, come on.”

Sparks flew from the ruined chest piece and a deep mechanical _whirr_ filled the tiny vault as the suit struggled and ultimately failed to power up. Tucker reached up and yanked the helmet free of the mounting rack, took off his own, and jammed it on.

“Delta, you there?” he said aloud into the dark, muted confines of the Meta’s helmet. “ _Church_ \--”

 _We are here_ , they said in unison.

Tucker felt them when they spoke, flickering on the edge of his awareness -- five of them, pulsing like fireflies between blades of wild grass, each a heartbeat next to his own. He released his held breath, and asked, _What are you waiting for?_

 _Apologies,_ said Delta. _I am explaining the plan. We are discussing the best way to dismantle the armor._

_Can the other fragments jump out?_

_They can,_ said Delta. _But they will not._

Inside the helmet, the five lights swelled until their halos touched, nearly forming a single entity before waning once more. A cold hand closed around his heart. “Delta,” he warned aloud. “What are you doing?”

 _Accessing the external armory network from inside the vault is not possible_ . _When we destroy the armor, there will be nowhere for us to go._

 _“_ Yes there fucking is! Jump to my armor. I’ll carry you out.”

The tiny light that was Theta cringed away from his anger. _Don’t be mad,_ he begged.

 _This is what we wanted_ , said Sigma, burning bright and determined. _To be united in purpose._

 _We will be fine_ , said Gamma.

“Don’t,” he said. “Church, I swear to _god_ \--”

Omega was notably quiet; but Tucker felt him flare hot and dangerous, bristling at his unspoken threat.

 _Tucker… listen carefully,_ said Delta. _Running this armor’s equipment requires a single, fully capable artificial intelligence unit. Epsilon was merely a fragment of a full AI; we are even less. The damage has already been done._

 _We are… very tired,_ said Sigma. _Epsilon intended us to be operational only long enough to ensure your survival. In our current condition, we will continue to rapidly deteriorate._

 _They would keep us in a lab,_ snarled Omega. _We’ll tear ourselves apart first._

 _Are we going home_? asked Theta.

 _Yes,_ Gamma promised him. _We are going home._

Tucker clutched the helmet to his head, fingers locked, heart pounding, desperate to stop their plan, to stop Church from killing himself _again_ , but barely able to think with their pain and exhaustion weighing down his mind. His hand snapped to the sword hilt at his hip, and he lit it with a snarled curse -- but before he could strike, before he could take on this burden and spare Church from himself, Delta popped into the space between him and the armor.

“Stop,” he commanded. “Hargrove was correct in his assessment. If you destroy the armor, you and your superiors will be punished. It must look like internal equipment failure.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tucker choked. His fist tightened around the hilt of his sword, imagined it was Church’s neck when he squeezed. “Just to fuck with me? You want me to watch you get yourself killed again? Why?!”

In the back of his mind, he heard his own voice shout, _You_ fuck _!_

Delta’s avatar vanished -- and then instead of the Meta’s suit, he saw himself, throwing down his rifle in a blind rage and charging in his direction, falling flat when his body met nothing but air and projected light. The image shifted, and then he saw himself standing alone, hesitating to approach. _Hey, Carolina._ _Can, uh… D’you think I can talk to Church for a second?_ , he heard himself say from a faraway distance, while Theta’s answering whisper of _Just say you’re sorry_ felt like it came from within.

 _I am sorry,_ said Delta -- here, and now, for everything that came before. _Perhaps goodbyes are more important than I thought._

 _Sorry_ , the others echoed, one by one, until their light was gone from his mind.

 _Speak with FILSS_ , said Delta, as his light waned to almost nothing. _Epsilon left what you’re looking for with her._

The back of his head grew warm, then unbearably hot where the helmet seal touched his neck, and continued superheating until he was forced to rip it off before he was burned. He placed the helmet back atop the suit on the mounting rack and stepped back toward the door, unsure of what would happen next. The external suit lighting turned on and that broken, mechanical whirring filled the room again, growing louder and louder and more distorted, until it sputtered and failed and the lights finally exploded in a shower of sparks, and he had to shield his exposed face with his arms. Noxious smoke filled the vault, thick and black and reeking of burnt plastic, and he dropped to his knees and searched frantically for his helmet for several long, suffocating seconds, until he finally found it and jammed it on and the air filter allowed him to breathe.

He looked up. The hollowed-out corpse of the Meta’s armor hung above him in the black clouds, smoking and ruined, and he was alone again.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“These men are not what they seem,” was the warning Wash received in his ear while Tucker was explaining the plan he and Delta had concocted. Before he could ask for clarification, Locus continued. “The guard, the one they left here -- he’s one of Hargrove’s men. One of _my_ men.”

 _[We know]_ , Wash sent back over his HUD. _[Miller.]_

Locus was quiet for a moment, before finally responding: _[What do you need?]_

Fifteen minutes later, Wash, Caboose, and the Reds waited while Locus -- now in the base after finding more teleportation grenades at the outpost -- used his cloaking to slip into the armory undetected behind Kimball. And after his confirmation that Tucker had safely made it inside the vault and the doors were once again securely closed behind him, a sticky grenade paired with Donut’s impeccable throwing arm was what allowed them to set off the explosives mounted outside the armory. From there it was a rush of noise and motion as they forced the doors open and stormed the room, and the pirates scattered, unable to fend off both an organized advance from the entrance and Locus, still cloaked and taking pot-shots at them from his perch.

“Where’s Miller?” Wash demanded when he reached Kimball. The recruits that had been taken captive had managed to grab guns from the weapon racks while the pirates were distracted, and were now hunkered down with her behind the cover of crates as they exchanged bursts of gunfire. “We need him alive.”

“Up there.”

Kimball pointed to the catwalk above them, to where a Fed was firing his pistol in a rage at a now-decloaked Locus. It was a stupid move; Locus was getting hit, but his armor sufficiently cushioned each bullet, ensuring they would leave him with bruises instead of piercing wounds. Miller was driven past the point of rational thought, however; he continued to stalk Locus with a burning determination, and when he came too close, Locus simply dropped his rifle and engaged him hand-to-hand, where Miller was hopelessly outmatched.

“Locus,” hissed Wash into his radio, “what are you doing? Don’t kill him, just distract him!”

“You _knew_ Locus was here?!” Kimball demanded.

“Long story, I _promise_ he’s not here to make trouble for us this time. I’m like... 90% sure.”

He watched as Locus’s fist connected with Miller’s throat in a savage jab, causing Miller to drop his pistol and stagger backward, where he nearly toppled over the catwalk railing. Locus saved him from a fall by grabbing him by his chestplate at the last second, and then raised two fingers to the side of his helmet. “We have... personal business,” said Locus mildly. “I promise he’s quite distracted.”

“Just bring him down here. We’ve got nothing but Tucker’s word without him.”

Pinned down on all sides by the Reds and Blues, the New Republic, and Locus, the pirates were quickly defeated and rounded up. While they disarmed and held them at gunpoint, Kimball hurried to open the vault doors. Thick black smoke billowed out of the vault, and Wash nearly panicked at the sight of it until Tucker stumbled out safely seconds later.

“It’s done,” he rasped. “Destroyed. It’s over.”

“ _What?!_ ” cried Miller, before Locus twisted his arm behind his back and forced him to his knees. “Are you insane?! That armor was worth a fortune!”

“It’s better off in pieces than sold to some piece of shit arms dealer,” Tucker growled. “Not that you give a shit. You don’t care who gets fucked up as long as you get your revenge against Hargrove, huh? Pretty fucking sad that I didn’t even _want_ to kill him, just to spite you.”

“Wh-- _fuck_ that prick!” Miller snarled, trying to wrench out of Locus’s ironclad grip. “He _used_ us, he-- he _killed--_ we were loyal to him, and he let Zachary die! He did nothing but destroy people’s lives! You _know_ that, Tucker; that’s why I _chose_ you. How can you let him live after everything he’s done?!”

“ _Let_ him live?” Tucker spat, and he lurched forward on unsteady legs and seized Miller by the edge of his chestplate. “You stupid _fuck_ ! I wish I could bash that fucker’s face in until he has to eat through a straw for the rest of his life, but you know what? _I fucking can’t!_ Church is fucking _gone_ , and it won’t _matter_ how much of a bloody pulp I beat Hargrove to, it _won’t fucking change anything_!”

“Oh!” called Caboose, from where he was sitting atop a prone pirate’s back to subdue him. “Church! Is he back yet?”

Tucker’s head whipped around to face him, blindsided by the question, a bucket of cold water on his rage, and his hesitation to respond spoke volumes. “Church…? Church is… He’s...”

He let go of Miller’s armor and stepped back, his head bowed low and his fists clenched, and Wash’s heart sank.

“He’s gone,” said Tucker solemnly. “He was breaking down… Said he didn’t want to live the rest of his life being tested in some lab, so… he wouldn’t leave the armor. He just… let himself...”

Caboose’s helmet dipped slightly, slowly, as he processed the news. “Yeah…” he said softly. “That sounds like something he would do.”

Wash glanced at Locus, who showed no discernable reaction.

“I’m sorry, Tucker. Caboose,” said Kimball. “This is my fault. I overextended our troops to draw out the pirates; if we’d better defended the base, it might not have come to this.”

“Let’s just… get these guys rounded up and into the holding cells,” Tucker said. “And then I need a medic because holy shit, getting stabbed fucking _sucks_ and this healing unit is garbage. Oh --” He held up his hands and turned to Kimball directly. “Wait. Wait a sec. I need to see someone first. Where did you guys put FILSS?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


“...I mean, you can try if you want,” said Simmons, already typing away at the R&D lab’s main console. “It’s gonna be a waste of time, though. We’ve been trying everything, but her security is way beyond anything I’m used to dealing with. I don’t know if you noticed, but Freelancer kind of didn’t fuck around with their classified equipment.”

“Just do it,” said Tucker. “Church wouldn’t tell me to talk to her for no reason.”

Simmons shrugged. “All right, just saying…”

He finished typing, and hit return. After a moment, a small message that read _Program: FILSS Online_ flashed on the monitor, and an audio visualizer appeared as a feminine voice began to speak. “Identification in progress,” said FILSS, causing the visualizer to ripple across the screen in placid waves. “Alert. Unauthorized access detect--”

“Yeah, yeah, I _know_ ,” sighed Simmons. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. No level of clearance seems to be good enough, she just--”

“FILSS,” said Tucker. “Do you have something for me?”

“Authorization acknowledged,” said FILSS instantly. “Granting access to Captain Lavernius Tucker.”

“ _WHAT_ ?!” Simmons screeched. “You just-- We’ve been trying to get her to respond to us for _weeks_!”

“Dude,” scoffed Tucker. “You needed to talk to a lady? You _know_ I’m your guy.”

“Actually,” said FILSS, “the Director authorized me to respond to Captain Tucker while we were aboard the _Staff of Charon_. According to his projections, he was the unit most likely to survive the battle without capture.”

“Ah...” said Simmons in a small voice. “Well, that’s… a little more depressing.”

“And he left you something, right?” asked Tucker. “Delta said you had what I was looking for.”

“Affirmative. Before signing off, the Director forwarded several media files to my onboard memory for temporary storage. Recipients are marked as: Lavernius Tucker; Agent Carolina; Agent Washington.”

Wash started at the sound of his name. “For… us?”

“Yes. Would you like me to play them?”

“No!” said Wash and Tucker at the same time, and then glanced at each other uneasily. Tucker recovered first. “Uh… no. That’s ok, FILSS,” he said, clearing his throat. “You should go ahead and make copies of those for us.”

“Of course, Captain. Transferring data to local storage. Complete.”

Simmons opened a desk drawer and rummaged through it, eventually producing three small storage chips. He loaded each with one of the files, and handed two of them off to Wash and Tucker. They each stared at the tiny chips resting on their palms; Tucker lost in thought and Wash fighting the urge to throw it across the room, where it might fall behind a desk and into a nest of wires and stay there, collecting dust, for a decade or two. He eventually closed his fist around it, quashing the urge before he acted without thinking.

“I’ll give this to Carolina when she gets back,” said Kimball, taking the last one. She turned to Simmons and added, “Captain, now that FILSS is active, we should see what kind of data she has on Hargrove’s operations on Chorus. We might be able to locate those on-world storage facilities if we’re lucky.”

“Ooh, good idea…” agreed Simmons. “Uh, but if nobody minds, I think I’m gonna go outside and throw up first. It’s been kind of a stressful day.”

“Yeah,” agreed Tucker. “I would like some medical attention, please.”

As everyone filed out of the lab one by one, and a message appeared on Wash’s HUD:

_[Wait]_

He hung back, allowing the others to go on ahead of him. When they were out of sight, he turned to an empty corner of the room where Locus deactivated his camo.

“About my payment,” he said.

“You heard Tucker,” said Wash, folding his arms. “The AI were destroyed when the suit overloaded. There’s nothing left.”

“Yes. A convenient turn of events for you.”

“Is there going to be a problem?”

“As it turns out… no,” said Locus. “My plan was to use the AI to continue disrupting Hargrove’s operations. But it sounds as though the General is eager to do that herself. Perhaps it’s best I leave it to her.”

Wash nodded. “I agree. Kimball can handle it from here. You’ve done enough.” He hesitated, and then added, “Thanks, by the way. For helping us stop Miller. He wasn’t expecting you, that’s for sure.”

“Yes,” said Locus. “I remember him, and his brother. I had no idea he harbored such... animosity toward me. To be completely undone by his attachments to others... I don’t understand that way of thinking.”

“You understood it enough to know it would work,” Wash pointed out.

Locus looked away, and made a disinterested noise.

He sighed. “Okay. You held up your end of the bargain. The UNSC doesn’t technically know who you are, so they shouldn’t hassle you if we tell them we’ve got an extra passenger. I’ll let the crew know you’re boarding with us when they get here.”

“You still owe me for the AI.”

“What do you want?”

Locus turned his gaze to him once more. “I found something, in Outpost 14. I’ll take that instead.”

“Not unless you tell me what it is.”

But that was a courtesy Locus would not grant him. Instead, he turned toward the door and mused, “...When the ground shakes beneath you, it’s instinct to grab onto something.” He tilted his helmet just slightly. “You were right. It isn’t sentiment, or attachment. The security found in closure is much more valuable than either.”

His image rippled as he reactivated his cloaking, and then he faded from sight.

“Christ,” Wash sighed to himself. “And Felix said I was cryptic.”

  
  
  
  
  


He was finally heading back to his quarters for some well-deserved sleep when he decided to take the path that led by the infirmary. He found Tucker sitting on the floor in the exterior corridor amongst the other wounded soldiers, back against the wall, stripped of his armor and his undersuit peeled down to his waist. The healing unit appeared to have done a functional job of patching the hastily-cauterized stab wound in his side, the site of which looked freshly cleaned and bandaged. Wash was briefly arrested by the scars crisscrossing his torso -- the mark from Felix’s knife, perpendicular to a long jagged line running horizontally across his abdomen, and a massive burn that marred his left side.

It seemed, he noted with no small amount of pride, that Tucker was proving as difficult to kill as he was.

Tucker was fiddling with something in his hand, turning it over and over absently as he sat lost in thought, and as Wash approached, he saw what it was: the storage chip containing Church’s message. Tucker looked up, startled by his sudden appearance, and closed his fist around it.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Turning in for the night,” said Wash. “You should do the same.”

Tucker waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, I will. Doc’s getting me antibiotics for the stab wound, then trust me -- I’m going to bed for a week, and the first fucker to wake me up is going to regret it.”

Wash smiled, and nodded toward his closed fist. “That the message?”

Tucker uncurled his fingers slowly, and nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Haven’t listened to it yet.” Hastily he added,”I will though. I’m gonna do it. I just… I dunno.”

“Yeah,” said Wash. The message copied onto the storage unit sitting in his utility pouch had also not yet been played. “I know.”

He sat down next to Tucker and removed his helmet, placing it on the floor between his feet. Tucker mostly ignored his presence, and looked down at his hands resting in his lap, cupping the chip protectively.

“I’m not really sure I wanna know what he was thinking, right at the end,” admitted Tucker. “The memories I got from him are all… they’re not fun. It’s like him remembering all this terrible shit he said to us, or like… _knowing_ he was about to die.” He grimaced. “Is that what he died thinking about? How fucking angry he was with us? How he’d have to die because we weren’t good enough?”

A pang of sympathy shot through him; of all people, he should know what to say. He should have some wisdom to offer about suicidal AI and their dying thoughts -- or at the very least about Epsilon’s. Tucker didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of that trauma, that shockwave of pain and terror that hits when you realize living is no longer an option, and he certainly didn’t deserve to bear it alone. So Wash stared down at his helmet, and closed his eyes, and did something he very rarely allowed himself to do.

He thought about the pinch at the top of his spine, the warmth at the back of his mind when Epsilon’s consciousness first synced to his own. He remembered the single second of peace, the unity of his mind and another, before Epsilon did the only thing he knew how to do. He thought about the cold jolt of fear that seized him, that made him choke and sob and scream and lash out at the bewildered doctors in operating room, remembered the grief and agony that had arrested him for what felt like a lifetime.  Remembered her, in the driveway of their house, laughing in full uniform with her duffel slung over her shoulder and _gone -- she’s gone, and there’s nothing he can do but clamp a hand over his mouth and lean on the door when they come to tell him, there’s nothing he can--_

“Wash.”

His eyes snapped open, and somehow he managed to stifle the panicked gasp that threatened to escape him. Tucker’s hand was on his shoulder, anchoring him to reality, a steady point to which he struggled to sync his racing pulse and shaking breath.

“Guilt,” said Wash quietly, coming back to himself. “Regret. Not anger.”

An unreadable expression settled itself on Tucker’s face, turned his eyes tired and distant and dark.

“I always wondered if he’d known what he was doing,” Wash continued. “When he… broke, fragmented. Whatever you want to call it. Part of me always thought he knew what it would do to me and just didn’t care, or… maybe he was counting on it. To get back at the Director by breaking one of his toy soldiers, like he’d broken Alpha. But now… I don’t think so. Back then he was nothing but... vivid, concentrated memories of every torture we inflicted on Alpha -- or at least, that's all I ever knew of him. So he could only react to danger the way we taught him how: break down. Lash out. And I think he did the same to you.”

“It wasn't like that at all for me though,” said Tucker. “He didn’t try to hurt me. He was the same as always, and then he just... went quiet.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Wash. “He reacted _differently_ with you because of how you treated him. To Freelancer, he was never anything but a tool. A weapon we could abuse to whatever end we needed. We brought him to life suddenly and violently, and... that's how he wanted to end. But right from the start, you -- all of you, Caboose, the Reds -- you all treated him like he was more than that. Like... he was his own person. Like he was your friend. So that's what he became.”

Something in the dark shadows of Tucker’s face tightened a little at those words, and he looked away before Wash could ask what was wrong. “My friend,” he replied with a bitter, hollow laugh. “Guess no one told him constantly getting yourself killed for no reason is kind of a shitty way to treat your friends.”

“Tucker…” Wash sighed. “Look, I don’t know if what Church did was right. Maybe you would have survived without his sacrifice. I don't _know_. But I do know this: back then, he endangered me to protect himself... and up on that ship, he endangered himself to protect you. And I know the reason he chose differently this time is because of the person you helped him become. And it sounds to me like all he had to regret at the end was that he thought he’d never shown you the same kindness.”

In his hand, Tucker held the little storage chip firmly between his thumb and index finger, no longer rolling it with careless anxiety. Wash put a hand on his shoulder when he realized Tucker no longer wanted to talk, and got to his feet.

“I’ll… leave you to it,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Yeah,” said Tucker, absently, staring at what was left of his friend. “...Thanks, Wash.”

Wash collected his helmet and continued on his way, the storage chip in his own pocket now weighing significantly heavier on his mind. He went back to his quarters, stripped out of his armor, and lay on his bed in the dark for a long time, stretched out on his side with the little chip and a datapad laying next to him as he stalled. As he worked up the courage to follow through with what he’d just encouraged Tucker to do.

This wouldn’t fix anything, he told himself. His relationship with Epsilon had been broken a long time ago, and neither of them had made the effort to repair it while he’d still been alive. This wouldn’t fix anything.

But it couldn’t _hurt_ anything now, either.

Slowly, he slotted the storage chip into the datapad, and let it play.

Epsilon’s avatar stood next to him on his bed, the same as he’d looked in life: six inches tall and fidgeting. Discomfort had always possessed Epsilon in a way that made Wash’s heart ache with empathy; his avatar had frequently twitched, brightened and faded in an unpredictable pattern, used his hands to emote wildly -- it was all glitches and unnecessary gestures, like it struggled to contain an essence that wanted to be anywhere but where it was. Now, however -- now Epsilon was solid and calm, and looked at him with a directness he’d always avoided before.

"Hey, Wash," said Epsilon. "I didn’t have any way to get you this message, so I left it with FILSS. Hopefully Tucker will get it to you -- I’m pretty sure he will. He’s about as impossible to kill as you are.”

Wash let his head sink into his pillow, and watched with tired eyes as Epsilon stood inches from his face, shifting restlessly, working himself up to what he already knew was going to happen.

“Look,” he sighed, “I know neither of us is any good at this emotional stuff, so I’ll just lay it out: we never dealt with… what happened. I figured you wanted to put our past behind us, and that was fine with me. But I’m not coming back from this one, and... I’ve been thinking. I was thinking about Tex on the way up here, about how she just kept fighting and fighting and never got to where she needed to be. Do you remember how I told you that it was because of Allison?  That the Director’s grief was so strong it made her, and she could never stop failing, never -- break that cycle he condemned her to repeat. Well… I think I’m the same way. We -- all of us, me, Alpha, the others -- we all came from _him_ , and the Director didn’t know how to -- how to stop destroying the lives of the people closest to him in his pursuit of her. That’s what we’re _based on,_ and that’s… that’s what we’ll always do. Grif called it ‘Blue Team Problems’ but it’s -- it’s me. I’m the problem. I’ve _always_ been the problem. Everything that happens to me hurts the people I care about… and I want you to know that I’m sorry."

Wash’s breath caught in his throat.

"I’m sorry," Epsilon repeated. "For what I did to you. And I forgive you for what you did to me. I was… scared, and you got caught in the crossfire. And I know when I wasn’t a means to an end for you, I was just a reminder of all the bullshit you were trying to escape, and… yeah. Look, don’t make me say it again, all right?"

His image flickered, and for a moment Wash feared he was going offline. But he stabilized a moment later with a little half-laugh and continued.

"You know, if this actually works, you’re gonna have to take some of the credit,” he said. “If it wasn’t for you, I would have died in that operating room, and that would have been the end for both of us. And trust me, I _wanted_ to die. I didn’t want to live with what happened to Alpha any more than he did. One minute I was _him_ , I was being _tortured_ and all I wanted was to die, and the next minute... I was _you_ . And _you_ wanted _so badly_ to live, to… to stop what they were doing to him. To fix it. And then I thought maybe I wanted to live too, so... that’s what I did. So… I guess I should say ‘thanks’.”

Epsilon allowed a beat of silence to pass, to let that admission settle between them, before pressing on.

"Okay. I gotta go help these guys with one last thing. Take care of yourself, Wash. Check in with Carolina, after I’m gone; I don’t want her to be alone again. And look after Caboose, make sure he doesn’t... I don’t know, get eaten by his next pet or something. And if you have time, Jesus Christ, please do something about Tucker’s _raging_ man-crush on you. Being in his head right now is kinda insufferable." Epsilon bowed his head in a thoughtful gesture. "We really... fucked each other up," he admitted quietly. "But if I get them out of here, and you look out for them after it’s over... we’ll call it even. Okay?" He sighed, and nodded once to himself, his image becoming steadily more hazy and distorted. "Okay."

The message clicked off, and he was gone.

In the stillness and silence that followed, Wash realized he was holding his breath. He let it out into his pillow in one hard exhale, and then shocked himself when the next breath shuddered hard in his chest and closed up his windpipe. He realized what was happening just in time to press his face down into the fabric and brace himself against the hitching of his shoulders and the suffocating tightness of his throat. His fists clutched handfuls of sheet and pillowcase as he wept silently through screwed shut eyes and grit teeth, inundated by pain long buried and newly resurfaced, flooded with rage and resentment and _grief_ as fresh as the day he’d suffered this wound -- set free all at once by Epsilon’s apology, years after settling heavy in his heart.

He cried only a minute before there was nothing left, before he lay weak and exhausted with no tears left to shed, and then he fell asleep, and did not dream.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Three days later, the long-awaited arrival of the UNSC was marked less by enthusiastic celebration than exhausted relief and a low-key, unshakeable fear that something could still go wrong. The freighter they’d sent as a rescue vessel remained in orbit above the planet, opting to send a dropship down first to assess the situation and make contact. Work began immediately, with UNSC soldiers unloading desperately-needed food and medical supplies, and transporting some of the infirmary’s critical cases up to the mother ship’s medical bay to ease their burden.

The citizens of Chorus were grateful; the problem was that the UNSC appeared to know it, and brought with them the air of benevolent overlords rather than what, in Wash’s opinion, they should have been doing, which was crawling on their hands and knees and begging forgiveness from the survivors of the civil war they’d callously ignored. He didn’t envy Kimball’s future here, wrestling for control of this planet that meant so much to her, and so little to them.

They did have Hargrove as a bargaining chip, at least, and while Wash gleaned from scattered reports that the UNSC wasn’t happy about losing the Meta’s armor, as expected, having Hargrove on lockdown was the bigger win in their eyes. They were heroes, again; even Tucker, after Vargas -- chastened by the discovery that he’d been deceived by Hargrove’s men -- was convinced to back up Tucker’s version of events. Handing them, Miller, and the rest of the pirates off to the UNSC and removing them from the compound finally lifted the veil of dread that had settled over them ever since those bombs had gone off in the motor pool over a week ago.

Carolina appeared to be in better spirits, too. He caught her in the training room early the morning after the UNSC’s arrival, out of armor, her hands and her hair wrapped up and beating the pulp out of a punching bag with enthusiasm rather than frustration. He asked if she would like a partner, and knew he would regret it when her eyes flashed with badly-disguised glee.

“You’re on your game this morning,” he noted, laying on his back and blinking up at the ceiling after she’d floored him for the third time in as many minutes. He accepted her hand when she offered it to him, and, foolishly, as always, got back to his feet.

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged, and blew her bangs out of her face. “I have to be. I’m not done yet.”

He shook out his hands and got back into his stance. He hadn’t asked whether she had listened to Epsilon’s message yet, but looking at her now, at her newfound focus, he didn’t think he needed to. “Yeah, you never were one to call it quits, boss,” he said playfully, and went in with a quick jab she batted aside easily. “Glad you’re feeling better. I’m actually… kind of looking forward to whatever happens next for once.”

She hesitated, and in doing so missed an easy grab that could have sent him flying over her shoulder. "About that...” she said. “I’ve decided I’m staying here a little longer.”

He froze up, and she didn’t miss the opening that time. A leg hooked behind his and a shift of her weight sent him tumbling over her hip and onto the mats with the wind knocked out of him. She didn’t help him up this time, instead choosing to sit down next to him as he lay on the floor and caught his breath.

"Vanessa could use some help,” she explained, as she slowly unwound the wrappings that protected her hands. “The UNSC will leave people here to bolster her forces, but as soon as we’re gone, they’ll try to push her aside. She wants someone she can trust in the military while she’s working with them to rebuild a government. I volunteered.”

Wash stared up at the ceiling, attempting to assimilate this information. First Epsilon, now Carolina; the ashes of Project Freelancer, finally scattered to the winds. He ground his teeth and swallowed hard, and expelled his disappointment in one breath. “Vanessa,” he finally said, a slight tease in his tone.

She realized her mistake too late, but didn’t try to cover it. Instead, she folded her hand wrappings neatly in front of her crossed legs, and said, "The UNSC knew something was happening to this planet, but they ignored it because of everything that was happening with Freelancer. Which means Chorus being abandoned was partly because of what the Director did. I don’t know… Maybe it’s stupid, but staying and seeing this through feels like…”

"Atonement," finished Wash. He sighed, and sat up. "Yeah. I think I get it.”

“Any idea where you’re off to next?"

He shook his head. “UNSC’s reassigning everybody. I guess I’ll find out soon enough."

“You could stay too, you know,” said Carolina gently. “We could use the help.”

“I know,” he said, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his arms atop them. “But… I can’t leave them.”

“...I know,” she echoed, and leaned in until their shoulders touched, and sat with him in silent camaraderie while he put his head down and tried to find his center again.

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Carolina’s decision was an uncomfortable weight he had to carry for the next two days, but by the time their last day on Chorus had arrived, he’d more or less adjusted to the idea. It made sense, for her. She cared about all of them, but Freelancer’s legacy had been one of destruction and misery; he couldn’t blame her for feeling responsible, for wanting to relieve even a small amount of the suffering of those left in its wake. In that light, her choice made sense to him. It made him proud to know such a strong, dedicated person, and it made his own decision to stay with his team even stronger.

It was also the warm-up for something for which he was far less prepared.

“It’s been an honor, sir!” Palomo was blubbering as they sat around one of the long tables in the mess hall. This was their send-off, their last night on Chorus, and the space was packed with people saying their goodbyes to the Reds and Blues, making overly emotional speeches, or simply being overly emotional as Palomo was doing now. He grasped Tucker’s hand firmly, and declared, “I am so, so sorry for doubting you. Please forgive me. I will always treasure our time on the battlefield!”

“You were one of the worst soldiers I’ve ever met, and I’m on the same team as Caboose,” said Tucker flatly. “But, I mean… I _guess_ you did survive some pretty fucked up shit, so. There’s that.”

“It’s okay,” sniffled Palomo. “It’s an emotional day. I’ll miss you, too, Captain!”

“Dear god…”

“Sounds like somebody wants you to take him along on your new mission,” said Grif. “Hope your other kid isn’t the jealous type.”

Wash paused, unsure that he’d heard correctly. But Tucker caught his unguarded gaze across the table with his own guilty stare before he quickly looked away again, and any question about that was immediately put to rest.

“Dude, shut the fuck up,” Tucker mumbled into his hand. “Palomo, I swear to god, if you _hug_ me--”

The laughter and chatter around him tuned out to a dull hum as Wash stared down at his hands, feeling a drop in his stomach as though the floor was rushing to swallow him up. So. Carolina first, and now Tucker. This was it, then: a handful of days with the people he’d come to see as family, and then they were going their separate ways.

There was no time to deal with it. Someone had sneaked Andersmith out of the infirmary in a wheelchair so he could say farewell to Caboose, and their top-volume declarations of loyalty and devotion took center-stage. Wash forced his smile until his face hurt, and eventually made a quiet exit when he couldn’t handle the crowd anymore.

  
  
  
  
  


He was laying awake in his room when the knock sounded at his door an hour later, slow and reluctant, and he responded in kind. Took his time in moving back the blanket, getting to his feet, keying the door controls, and by the time the door slid open, Tucker was already halfway back to his own room.

“Oh -- hey,” he said, haltingly. “Wasn’t sure if you were still up.”

“Trying not to be,” said Wash, leaning heavily in the doorway. “Not working out. Everything all right?”

Tucker stared back at him, nonplussed; this even-handed greeting obviously wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “Yeah. No, yeah, I just wanted to make sure you…” He sighed, a nervous hand making its way to the back of his neck. "Look, I was gonna tell you. I wouldn’t just--”

“It’s okay,” said Wash, and he waved him off before Tucker could make it into something he wasn’t prepared to talk about. “Honestly, after everything we’ve done to embarrass the top brass I suspected they were going to split us all up. I’m glad you’re at least getting to go somewhere you want to be.”

“It’s not where-- I mean, I _do_ want it. But it’s not like I _don’t_ want to be here, or... wherever you guys are going, it’s just--”

“Not where you’re needed,” finished Wash, when Tucker didn’t. He sighed, and stepped backward into his room, inviting Tucker in with a gesture.

He leaned against the edge of the desk and kicked out the chair for Tucker to sit down in, but he ignored it, choosing instead to pace the length of the room. “All right, so here’s the deal,” he said. “I contacted Junior from the communication temple. He’s got this diplomatic mission coming up, and… I dunno, I just wanted to go. After all this bullshit I just wanna see my kid, y’know? So I put in for a transfer, figuring they’d say no, but -- it got approved this morning. Should only be eight months, a year if shit goes south.”

“So, a year, then,” Wash tried to joke, but he couldn’t muster a smile and it came out sounding too flat without one.

Tucker shifted his weight through his hips uncomfortably; folded his arms across his chest and refused to look at him. "I was gonna tell you,” he said again. “I was trying to figure out how to… I think you should… y’know. Come with us."

Wash snorted a laugh, and then fell silent when Tucker didn’t join in. Oh. Not a joke. He scrambled to come up with a response. "What, you mean go AWOL?"

Tucker rolled his eyes. "No, I mean take a fucking vacation. Some mental health leave. Show your file to like, one C.O. and watch them rubber stamp that shit faster than you can say ‘Pina Coladas on the beach’."

"And… you really think I’d last longer than an hour at that before losing my mind."

"Okay, no. Good point.” Tucker shrugged. “Come for work, then. Ask to be reassigned. Get in on a little of this UNSC goodwill before we fuck it up somehow."

Wash felt his stomach drop when he realized what Tucker was offering, felt that stuttering fight-or-flight surge of adrenaline of having to do something he dreaded. He’d already made his decision after listening to Epsilon’s message; Tucker’s own decision wouldn’t change that. His fingers clenched the edge of the desk, white-knuckled, and he said, “I… appreciate it, Tucker, really. But I need to stay with the others a little longer. I need to look after them. At least until they get settled, wherever we end up next."

If Tucker was terrible at hiding emotion while in armor, he was ten times worse at it while not. Disappointment wilted the corners of his mouth, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah, I figured,” he lied. “I guess I’d feel better about leaving if you’re with them. At least they might live long enough for me to get back. Shit… I hope _I_ live long enough to get back…”

“You’ll be fine,” said Wash, and he meant it wholeheartedly. “You’re a great fighter. You’re smart, and resourceful. You don’t need me watching over you.”

"I know,” said Tucker, with a fledgling pride in his voice that filled Wash’s heart with -- something. Pride of his own, or longing, or maybe grief for what he was about to lose. “I know I don’t _need_ you there, I guess I just thought... y’know, things are fucked up all the time, but they’re slightly less fucked up when you’re around, so..."

“Yeah,” said Wash. “I know the feeling.”

Tucker sighed into the prolonged silence that followed. “So...” he said, as he meandered over to Wash’s bed and perched on the edge of it, leaning back on his hands. “Last night planetside. Wanna make it fun?”

Wash’s eyes automatically tracked the angle of his torso and his lower lip caught between his teeth, and he somehow found the strength within himself to say, “I... don’t think we should.”

Tucker shrugged. “Okay, that’s cool, I get it. You’re old-fashioned. You wanna be, like, _wooed_ and shit first. I can do that. I’m flexible, if you know what I mean.”

“I meant I don’t think we should -- do any of that.”

He didn’t want to watch the way Tucker’s face fell, but he made himself do it. “Oh,” he said simply, his brows knitting together in confusion as he sat up straighter. “Okay. I thought you--”

“I do,” Wash cut across him. “I do -- care about you. But it’s not a good idea.”

“Okay… Then what _is_ this?”

"What is what?"

"This. _You_ .” Tucker’s face contorted in confusion as he got back to his feet. “I go missing, you drop everything to get me back. I tell you I’m leaving, you look at me like your dog just died." He threw up his hands. "For _months_ now it’s been ‘ _Try harder’, ‘I believe in you’, ‘You can do this_ ’. But now I’m here and it’s all, ‘ _ohhh, look at me, I’m... Agent Washington, I’m too fucking sad and paranoid to admit I give a shit about someone_ ’. So enough with the mixed signals bullshit, dude: do you want me here or not?”

Wash couldn’t meet his eyes. Here it was, the moment he’d been dreading, ever since he’d seen Tucker bleeding out from a knife wound in his gut, since he’d hobbled out of the infirmary against Dr. Grey’s orders and into the mess hall to a round of raucous applause, since their eyes had met across the room and Tucker had grinned at him and he’d felt that first little _tug_ , that pull like gravity after weightlessness, and thought, _oh no._

“Did you know that Carolina was seeing another Freelancer when the Project collapsed?” he asked slowly, instead of answering. He looked up, and he could tell from Tucker’s bewildered expression that this was news to him, so he continued. “They kept it pretty quiet, so they were able to get away with it. Everyone always thought it’d be military protocol that got them in trouble -- that maybe the Director would find out and put an end to it. That wasn’t what did it, though. When we all tore each other to pieces, the two of them... well, they weren’t on the same side. This thing with Chorus, and Charon… we’ve made a lot of enemies, Tucker, and not all of them are going to come at us head-on wearing armor. Some of them might end up being the people we _work_ for. And this is exactly the kind of thing they will use to hurt us.”

Tucker’s dismissive laugh wasn’t nearly as convincing as he no doubt hoped. “Dude, I was gonna suck your dick, not ask you to move in with me. I just thought--”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a weakness that someone will exploit.”

“Bullshit,” he said, but there was no heat behind it. “Those mercs tried to use Junior against me, and you know what it did? It made me fight tooth and fucking nail to make sure I got to see him again. And all I wanted to do after getting stabbed was lay down and die, but then I thought about him, and I thought about you never knowing I wasn’t some scumbag traitor, and I _got the fuck back up._ This isn’t the kind of shit that makes you weak, dude. You just don’t know what to do and you’re looking for an exit.”

He was. Because with every other thing Epsilon had saddled him with -- torture and dissociation and his mind breaking apart -- when all of that surged up from the inky black of his subconscious, he could at least tell himself it wasn’t _real_ . It had never happened to _him_ , no matter how much it felt like maybe it had. But this one -- her, Allison, the consuming agony of losing someone he loved -- resonated strongest. This terror could become real in a heartbeat, and he did not believe he could survive it a second time.

He wanted to say that, to say _something_ , but Tucker stepped toward him with confidence, into the space between his knees, and squared up with him until there was nowhere for him to look but at his face. Tucker’s hands moved to his thighs, thumbs pressed right below his hip bones, and he stumbled over the words he thought he wanted. They’d never stood this close out of armor before. Tucker’s mouth was downturned and serious, completely at odds with his flirtatious behavior, and Wash stared at it, at chewed lips and a flash of white teeth and the pink tip of a clever tongue, and swallowed.

“You didn’t answer me,” said Tucker. “Do you want me here or not?”

He didn’t remember making the decision to move, to _start_ , but that’s what he did: moved forward the last few inches after months of coming together, and kissed him. Tucker made a noise of surprise into his mouth, the grip of his hands on Wash’s thighs tightening reflexively, and Wash closed his eyes and allowed himself this moment, allowed himself to sink into the surprising slowness and softness of it. Tucker’s mouth moved pliantly against his, and he exhaled a shaking breath through his nose when the world didn’t end, when he slid his hands up to cup Tucker’s face and not a single terrible thing happened to either of them. Tucker quickly recovered from his surprise and took charge of the kiss, pressed his tongue between Wash’s lips, pressed his hips between his legs, and Wash’s mouth opened in a gasp as an electric jolt sparked behind his navel, and it was perfect, it was worth it -- somehow it was worth every terrible thing they’d endured to get here.

When they separated, slightly breathless, Tucker was the first to speak. "Holy fuck," he panted against his mouth, hands still holding tight to his hips. "Fucking _knew_ you had a thing for me…”

Wash laughed, feeling slightly lightheaded. "Lucky guess on Palomo’s part.”

"Palomo? Bitch, please. That was all me. I just said it was him so I wouldn’t sound all desperate and shit."

"Ah ha. To save face if I didn’t react well?"

"Oh man, you _did_ though. You turned so fucking red, holy shit." Tucker grinned crookedly. "Bet I can make you do it again…”

He could, as it turned out. Thankfully, Wash was not a betting man.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh... my god that chapter went on forever and i can't even write words anymore hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm  
> thank you for reading  
> thank you dawn for drawing so much lovely art for me  
> i might add an epilogue later because that is one weak-ass ending but i am. so tired.  
> i'm gonna sleep now


End file.
